Here's something a little different. Another "artsy" picture if you will. It's the core of the MW as seen from DPO, pasted behind the mountain range seen from Kitt Peak.
Clear Skies,
-C
Very cool Moon. It almost looks like art, not reality.
Hello again.
Those are some pretty cool videos of the asteroid/dwarf planets. The comet video was really awesome, I think it would be interesting to see color in it. Looking forward to see those film exposures; 800 speed should be plenty.
Can't say I was disappointed with the meteor storm, because I knew it was too good to be true. I went outside for a few minutes anyways and spotted a single streak in the East at 11:30PM ET heading South away from Cygnus, so it's possible it was from the new "storm." I took another look at my HDR Moon and decided maybe it wasn't bright enough, although it looks good on my screens. I boosted the earth-shine by 50% and added some more effects, including a ridiculous unsharp mask that yields an interesting look.
Clear Skies,
-C
May 24, 2014
DPO Update
Last night I spent quality time watching for the possible new meteor storm, and also taking extended sky exposures of an hour or more of Camelopardalis, which was the supposed radiant of the possible new shower. I used an Olympus OM -1 with - get ready for it- 800 speed film. Now the challenge will be finding a reputable place to develop it.
With the telescope I had great fun until 3am when the skies became overcast. I took multiple exposures of the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres, then used Maxim DL to animate their motion. i did the same with Comet 209P/ LINEAR, which was the donor of all the meteor streams that were supposed to put on a show last night. BTW, I saw few meteors, and am not even sure that any were from Camelopardalis.
This first video (left) shows the motion of Ceres against the background stars, from 8:51pm to 1:58 am MST.
The video on the right shows the motion of Vesta against the background stars, from 8:53pm to 2:02 am MST.
The last video I made shows the motion of Comet 209P/ LINEAR from 11:40pm to 12:43am. I have it on You Tube because the file is too big to upload here: http://youtu.be/SInsOFi9rwg On it, each image is a 40 second exposure of the comet (note elongated nucleus due to tracking on the stars), with a 5 second delay between images. In effect, this translates roughly to about an image per minute. The video has two jumps or gaps when I reset the imaging, one from 11:44 - 11:47, and the other from12:09 - 12:23, but it represents just under an hour of movement.
A few things to note: cosmic rays striking the CCD chip, a meteor in one of the early frames, the changes in the comet's tail over time. I have only seen this rapid motion in one other comet- and that was many years ago. I was excited when I noticed it last night- I may try again tonight on some of these, if the weather cooperates.
The field of view of my CCD camera is 73.2 ' by 49.1'.
Welcome back Richard! This site has sort of evolved into a private forum between Chris and me.
But your input is, as always, warmly welcomed.
Is it ever going to get warm? I was in AZ last week and it was hard to come back to this! While there, I was able to shoot images of the supernovae in M82 and M99, as well as one other galaxy (I forget). The SN in M82 is still very obvious so if you get a chance you may want to try viewing it. But don't get frostbite! See my other comments below re: the Moon and the Crab.
Well it has been a while since i have been on here but i figured i would check it out, I will leave some comments if i
have some time.
-Richard 03/10/14
Greetings from the arctic.
I finally had some free time during the weekend, and after looking at some un-edited astrophotos I decided to work on a mini project. It's nothing amazing, but this stuff just continues to astonish me.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be seeing...maybe because of how you said, different monitors? I see a waxing crescent moon and what looks like faint earthshine on the rest. Is that correct?
It's a composite image of shots taken at different times. One from July 16, 2011 and the other from January 28, 2012. Took some time combining them and getting them to scale correctly since they were taken at different angles, focal length, etc. Both shot with my a230 DSLR and the Zhumell Z8.
*EDIT: I realize that the results may vary on different monitor settings. If you can't see it, try tilting the monitor or look from a different angle.
Clear skies,
-C
Below is my last image from DPO, taken just after midnight, January 3, 2014. It's the ONLY image I have processed so far. 55 second exposures (17 of each) in R,G, B = 47 mins. total exposure.
With my new guiding set up I can now take longer exposures.
Wow! That's some serious color. Looks like there is less noise (I can't seem to find any) than some of the previous pictures too. I wonder what those squiggly lines are around the bright star 5'clock from the center of the nebula are...result of wind/vibrations perhaps?
Yeah, could be. Funny thing is, I was doing this while shooting a one-handed video on my cell phone to show how I take photos at DPO. I was the least careful ever. You can see that many of the stars aren't exactly round and are blobby, probably artifacts from combining. If you want, you can watch the video from the link on my blog: http://blogs.gpschools.org/herrola/2014/01/. It's under the entry called Desert Peak Observatory. It may bring back some good memories and you can also see the improvements we have made since you were there. It's about 20 mins long.
The Crab Nebula
Update: GLSG XI
I don't have much time to spend writing about the event, but I think this pic sums up the event well enough:
(I wish I had a wider lens!!)
Five minutes of one frame @ ISO 400, F/3.5
I've been doing wide field exposures wrong for so long...
Hello!
I'm glad to see this site is still up! Anyways, I've been trying something new pretty recently with the time I still have before college, and I think anyone with a nice astrophotography setup has to do this eventually! Since I still have the "borrowed" Maksutov telescope, I've been doing a little experimenting with mosaic imaging. I decided to try it after I read an article in S&T about mosaic imaging the full moon. The author used a digital recording camera (such as a DSLR or video recorder), a Schmidt-Cassegrain with a tracking mount, and some pretty basic software. The process was pretty self-explanatory, so I figured why not since I conveniently have in my possession a 5" Maksutov with a polar tracking mount, a good webcam, and a full moon. This was no walk in the park though...took me a good two and a half hours total to setup the scope, configure the drive, get the computer setup, find a mobile power source, and then another hour to get the footage. However, I think the worst of it was the mount. It's really jumpy, it doesn't track well, the motors are pretty weak, etc. I think anyone with a modest mounting system could easily bypass those difficulties, especially if they're not using some primitive hand-panel like the one on the ETX125. As far as capturing the image, you're doing the same thing I explained below with the Jupiter stacks. Only this time you take the finished stacks into a image manipulator and "stitch" the images together. I only had a few hours to play with that night so I only got a fraction of the moon, and the next day was a no-go. But so far, I'm pretty happy with the results. The resolution is incredible compared to some of my previous single-frame shots with the Z8.
Here's a side-by-side comparison of the unedited mosaic and a cropped single-frame image:
As you can see, the mosaic has great resolution, non-existent noise, and even some good contrast. Keep in mind too that I didn't do any more edited after the registax wavelets, meaning that I didn't touch contrast, brightness, unsharp masks, or light-levels. If I have more time in the future I will try to post a full mosaic to show how far this can go. I'm confident that anyone else could do this, and probably easier with better equipment and more time.
(Five stacks: captured with Sharpcap software, processed in Registax 6,and stitched together with GIMP 2.0. Equipment: Kodak 0.3 Mp webcam, Meade ETX125 Maksutov-Cassegrain on polar mode)
-C
Last night I had time for One set of images before the sky became totally cloudy! It was the long-awaited Whale.
I took some time to properly color balance this one. Some really cool things about it:
The Whale Galaxy is C 32 or NGC 4631. Note the companion galaxy above it, elliptical NGC 4627. Then find the bright star almost in front of the whale, at the 3pm position near the photo edge. The small blob underneath it is peculiar galaxy PGC 42772, an Sc type. I think I can actually resolve that shape, too.
That's very, very cool. IMO I think that's one of your best because you captured so much detail on the inside of the galaxy, and those other galaxies are easy to spot too! That background noise is pretty peculiar. I've never seen that before in any of the astrophotos (on this website). Is that a product of the camera or IP?
It's a result of the frame combine plus I don't dither the images. You commonly get these horizontal or vertical bands- Guess I didn't do so good of a job setting the dark point to where you can't see them. I did 20 sec. exposures, 12 each of RGB images and then stacked and processed in Photoshop. I used both Noel Carboni's and Bob Berta's tools.
Cloudy last night, and tonight's not looking much better. (It actually cleared sometime between 3 and 4 am but it's light here by 4:30, so, no joy.)
Hi from DPO. This is my gem on Night One- the Needle Galaxy, NGC 4565 . Note companion galaxy NGC 4565A at bottom left.
Wow! That's really nice. I'm curious as to why the image is so red.
Probably just my image processing error, I don't know. I was using a 1:1:1 R:G:B ratio when it really should be more like 1:1.2:1.5.
Here is Comet PANSTARRS from this morning (5/7/13), taken while the sky was brightening about 4:45 am. I don't know if you can see it, but there is a an antitail extending faintly towards the left.
Hmm...the anti-tail isn't obvious but yes I can see it. I'm also wondering why the image has so much dark on the outside. Maybe it's not the camera, but a simple vignetting issue?
Its really not so much dark on he outside as I was trying to reduce the big blob of blue light under he comet- not sure why this happened, other than it was getting light. There was no fog on the glass or clouds that I could see, but maybe there was some light cloud cover that only the camera could see. If you enhance the blue blob the antitail becomes more obvious, just above that big white star at 8pm to the comet nucleus.
Well the reason why I brought that up is because I remember seeing the same thing on a lot of your pictures last year, and I am still suggesting that even with processing it might be some vignetting because wouldn't the entire image be enhanced uniformly? So my theory is that there might be a tad more light at the center of the image, which allows the brightness to increase so much after processing the image, if that makes any sense.
PanSTARRS at NRAO
PanSTARRS Update:
(This is a bad picture...I really wish the website didn't compress the images so much!)
With warmer temperatures and no wind, finding PanSTARRS was a breeze with my camera. I got out a good hour (or less) after sunset. To my surprise it was significantly brighter. The tail was much more noticeable, as well as the nucleus. I'd also like to mention that I could spot this thing with the naked eye, about 10 minutes before it would disappear behind the houses in the foreground. Also observed it in the telescope...Wow! I've never seen a comet that good before. I was impressed. The view with the 15mm was spectacular. Note that the comet probably didn't increase in brightness. I think that was my imagination. These pictures were also taken at a longer focal length than the previous picture.
Comet Ahoy!
Science fair was depressing, but suddenly I was brought back by this sighting:
Skies cleared as predicted, so I was eager to see PANSTARRS with the limited window of clear sky. I took a lot of pictures, without knowing where this thing was. All I had was the altitude to work with, which was about 8-10 degrees in this picture. The comet was not visible to my eye, so I took many shots in hopes of capturing it at least one or two of them. After analyzing them, I found this to be the best picture as an example. I zoomed the image to show the tail which is easily visible in this picture.
Very nice Jupiter images! It has been pretty lousy weather here in Tucson. Only one night clear so far (Dec. 28) where I could do any imaging. Then a few days ago my computer decided to not boot. I had to make a trip to the Apple store in town but thankfully they got it up and running. I did get some new targets on the 28th. Above I have posted one of them, a pair of interacting galaxies in Canis Major, IC 2163 and NGC 2207.
Quick Update..here's another development with the webcam stuff.
I went out last night and was stunned by the marvelous seeing conditions that cannot be described in words. Instead, this picture by NASA is probably a better representation of what I saw last night:
And yes, I chose this one on purpose because that's exactly what I saw last night (minus Io itself). At the same moment, both the GRS and Io's shadow were in transit (at one point the shadow was directly over the GRS), which is sweet. Even though there were some passing clouds, they did not degrade the image quality at any point. Conditions were so good, I ventured all the way to 300x, with the only limitations being the cheap barlow lens. After a while, the clouds totally cleared around midnight, so naturally I brought my webcam out in the freezing winter air. In no time I was recording minutes' worth of footage for processing. This morning, I did a little magic with Registax and the GIMP:
Clearly, it's no where as good as the one above taken by Cassini on its way to Saturn in 2004, and it's not even as good as my previous ones (mainly because of the very noticeable contorted disk). Something that is better though is the size. I found out that up-scaling the image 200% with the Registax really makes the image less pixelated, although you won't really enjoy the benefits of a higher resolution, meaning that it won't be any sharper; it will just give you a larger file to work with.
Update 12/25/12
Merry Christmas! Happy holidays from Jupiter:
Chris,
I couldn't see any moon in your image below so I put it in Photoshop and enhanced just the dark part of the image, and there it is! Something interesting is to see how it forms a line, which I think is showing its relative motion during the time you stacked the images.
Hello!
SharpCap is the program I am using to record the video from the webcam to an .avi file. To process the picture, you will still have to use other software to do the stacking and image selecting such as Registax, which was the program I used for the image below. Shoot! I thought the observing was this Thursday..oh well. I actually did a little observing myself and got some more footage to process later. Well, I hope things went well for you guys though!
EDIT: Processed this last night. Seems to look better by better seeing conditions. Note the moon, either Europa or Io.
Chris,
You are indeed an AstroMaster! It's an awesome image!
If it's clear tomorrow night (Tuesday, Nov. 13), I am going to do an observing night starting at 7 pm. I will probably only go 1.5-2 hours because of the frigid temps predicted, but that could be your chance to try the web cam on Big Blue.
It still is not perfectly collimated, but Zach took the new collimator and worked on the white Dob last week in RATs, so maybe that at least is improved. Does SharpCap do the stacking and image selecting?
Just in case anyone is still viewing this site, here's an update for you:
A simple webcam image of Jupiter, taken at my house on 11/11 early morning. One day I was looking at an article about webcam astrophotos and decided to do my own. I can't believe how easy it was! I just removed the factory lens, strapped the camera onto the focuser barrel, aimed at Jupiter, and captured a 15-second .avi file as the planet drifted across the field. Originally I was going to use a barlow, but this was actually too much focal length (nearly impossible to locate and record a long enough .avi) so I stuck with the normal 1200mm. The field is actually cropped down from the original resolution, which doesn't seem to affect the quality. This would be something I would love to try on the Big Blue, with its automatic tracking and longer f/ length, which would allow more of the planet to fit in more pixels. Like I said, it's real easy. I just strap on the camera with some lock ties, and hook it up to my laptop with some video recording software. I actually tried the free and extremely useful SharpCap program. I used my Z8 Dob and a 1.3Mp Kodak S101 webcam.
My favorite site for comet information is on skyhound: http://cometchasing.skyhound.com/ It looks like you might also be able to see 2012 K5 LINEAR (second comet listed)
Hmm...can't say so because I wasn't really trying to look for the tail. It did look very stellar as the picture shows though. I may want to got out maybe tonight and see it? Depends...
Do you know of any comets in the sky within our reach?
Here is a photo of Comet 169P Hergenrother from last night, when we were observing it. I did not notice any directional shift in the coma,or a tail orientation, like this photo at the right shows. Did you?
Hey, that sure is a nice pic of Orion. Unfortunately, my only shot of Orion was extremely out of focus...probably because it somehow got moved or I didn't set it correctly because there is no focusing information (you have to guess the focus and hope it's right). So nothing there. I did however get very lucky with the focus on my first super-long, single exposure that is kind of like last year's image. IMO, this one is far more "clean" because I don't have to take twenty 30s exposures and combine them in a program. All the work was done in the camera. The only flaws were that the lens was set to 28mm instead of the wider 18mm, and the camera was shooting at medium resolution. This is 7 minutes at 400 ISO.
My next image is a surprising feature. After much trial and error over time (and experience in AZ), I have overcome the temptations of 'easy shooting,' meaning that I will not be shooting in burst mode (results in dead pixels, and low image quality), I will not shoot at high ISO, and I will not compromise white balance quality. So in this latest attempt, I got the Triangulum galaxy in this 275-second exposure. I've never done this before; shooting many, many long exposures like the other astrophotographers do. Until this, I though I could escape the difficulty with high ISO (reduces time to expose) and burst mode (doesn't require one to keep clicking the exposure after every exposure). But even though I did all of these things, it didn't come out quite as well as I'd hoped. It is okay, I guess. What I really need to do next time though is even more exposure time. Maybe like 5x longer or something.
Well, M33 is notoriously dim, even though it's mag is relatively high, it is very spread out, so I don't think that's too bad, considering. BTW, I am going to use one of your star trails pics as the opening pic on my Astro Unit 2 page under Current Studies. I am sure you don't mind.
You can just hardly see the weak spiral structure in this highly-developed image. I think more time would have done it, but my battery would beg to differ that night. Oh and this was through my 200mm telephoto lens.
So this one? This doesn't need a whole paragraph. It is what it is. Two images (one happens to be over exposed for the moons). Crap by my standards. Taken through the LX200 w/ barlow lens. Maybe it's the optics? Seemed nice through the camera EP.
Oh I forgot to talk about your M42. Yes that isn't bad. Without light pollution I bet that was very easy to process. It is very purple. I wonder why. Also, I don't know how you did it, but it looks like those stars are pretty focused to me. Very nice on that part. What does the original look like? I can't find it at the moment, but the stars were pretty focused, and after all the problems we had with dew, etc.! Go figure. I don't know why it's purple, either. I didn't mess with the color. I think the photo above is awesome! And only 2 images! How long was the exposure? Do you have the time on this? it would be cool to see which moon is which.
Oh, and here's one of my favorite pics that I took from this year's Up North trip to the thumb of MI. Adjusted contrast, saturation, and light effects.
Here is my best image of Orion from the Great Lakes Star Gaze X.
This is my best image for M42. It is really noisy because I tried to enhance the nebula and because it is only one 6 second shot.
Chris, Thanks for the updates on the image info. Maybe we can add some more glorious pictures this weekend at the Star Gaze! I'm bringing my camera and tripod. If I end up bringing the big blue, maybe we can piggyback on it. My class is 13 right now, and I think maybe 5-6 of them came? I too was happy with the turnout. And having you and Zach there with your telescopes made it so easy for them to get a lot of observations. Thanks!
I'll let you know when I get some of these posted.
Hello Mrs. Herrold. What a great observing night we had last night! I think the turn out was great...better than I've seen before IMO. It was great to see that your students
(was that the whole class?) were eager to come out, and I think a few came early to help you? That's great if they did! I'm sorry I was a little late because I totally forgot! But no harm done though.
As of now, I'm on my other machine, which doesn't have my other pictures to post. The other pics will probably be wide-field images of the Milkyway or maybe some miscellaneous day-time shots that I thought were interesting. For now, I will inform you on the pictures:
As you already know, I was using your Orion 80ED refractor. If I eventually post the wide-field shots, they will most likely be shots taken with an 18mm focal length (some may differ though). All of these shots (except for M51) are taken at 3200 ISO on my Sony a230 DSLR, and all exposures (except for M51) are 30s frames. Some of these are crop zoomed too, like M27 and M51. The zoom factor on both are 2.8x.
As for M51, I don't have access to the original files so I can't tell you the exposure times (at the moment). If I had to make a guess it's probably a combination of 200 and 400 ISO with a total exp. time of ~7-12 minutes at most.
And about M11, I think I can still see the triangle you are talking about. To me I see the square, but the brighter stars in the cluster create a triangle that 'points' at 7 o'clock. And yes I too was impressed with the resolution...it was almost unexpected. I can only imagine how awesome these pictures may look like with your 14-inch!
Hi again! If you are reading this on Tuesday, we are going to do an observing night tonight with my new Astro folks. The sky is totally dark at 9:25, I told folks to come at 9:15 ish but I will be there earlier - if you want to come and bring your scope you are of course very welcome! I love the pictures, esp. of the Swan and M27, one of my favorite targets. I also love how crisp the Wild Duck turned out- great resolution. Funny, to me it always looks triangular instead of square. The little cluster by M22 is a globular, NGC 6642. You can also just see the red giant (less purple) in M7.
Hi there! Yes I am taking a photo AP class, because I am just as interested as taking "artsy" daytime photos as those at night, and I want to learn more about daytime and eventually get into photoshop (when that part comes around). Yes, these are JPGs because the site won't accept TIFFs and they are HUGE files. I know, the Trifid/Lagoon is a pretty awesome shot IMO. Yes I know NGC 7000 is a little faint, but that's just a single 30s exposure...so I know it can be better granted more time! And yes that last shot is the original M51. In the crop-zoom, there is actually another galaxy: NGC 5198. It's a 13th magnitude galaxy that I've never detected visually, so that's cool that my camera caught it IMO.
I am so sorry to hear about your situation! I hope it won't be too much of a fuss to get it fixed! Yes, you got to try out your DSLR! It's way different but as I've experienced it's fun and pretty easy.
So here's some more shots for you.
You are looking at the Great Cluster in Sagittarius, which is what I think it should be commonly called, since it is so awesome. This is actually one of my clearest shots because you can't really tell that the ISO noise is interfering with the many milkyway stars in the background. I think I only adjusted levels for this single exposure. There is also an obvious NGC cluster about 2 o'clock from M22. I don't know what it's designation is but I know I've seen it before.
Something that I've noticed with my pictures (not just this one) is that the stars have some pretty bad purple fringing around neutral bright stars. This is obvious in the Trifid/Lagoon nebulae picture. I don't mean to bash your 80mm telescope, but when I was doing research on my new telephoto lens I saw that purple fringing anytime results with optical flaws. Something else that I am noticing is that the field is not totally flat. I cropped this shot to reduce the effect, but it is very apparent in the NGC 7000 photo. Notice how the stars smear away from the center of the picture. Just an observation.
So here's another picture like the M8/M20 shot. Once again both the camera's wide sensor and the short focal length work in tandem to get a similar result. So here you have both the Omega/Swan nebula and the famous Eagle nebula. This shot is weakly processed because all of my other attempts were either way to obvious or way to light in post-processing. So I went with the middle result. Again there is purple fringing on the stars. Maybe there is software to remove this? I will check that out. For now, this is it. What I think's amazing is that you can just hardly tell where the "fingers" are in M16. It is too small to crop, so I won't be able to pull it out. If only I had more focal length!
So here's another good one. You should be able to tell that this large cluster of whitish stars is the Wild Duck. To me the cluster almost looks like a square when viewed from far. Like many of my shots, this is just a single 30s frame with light processing. Only adjusted curves/levels. Something else that I am noticing is that there is a lot of dark nebulae in this picture! I didn't even see that before! Also, at the top there are a few trails which may be satellites.
This cluster should be easy. It's to the right of Sagittarius, and it is famous by a great Greek astronomer. It's the Ptolemy cluster, or M7. This was the easist of them all. The signal to noise ratio is such that you can't even tell I was shooting at a high ISO. I literately moved the slider in levels (the dark one). That's it. So also in the picture you can easily see dark nebulae to the NE and a little to the South. There is also a tiny NGC globular at 2:30.
I think this is was one of first images that I took when my camera was attached to the 80mm. It's M27, in a super-close crop-zoom of 2.8x the original frame. Obviously you can tell the blue and orangish shades. Did a lot of processing just to get it where it is, but I'm proud of the result! Another cool feature is the tiny white dwarf in the center! Single 30s exposure.
One more thing to share with you: This is a 12.5 minute exposure (200 ISO, so equivalent of a 1.56 minute 3200 ISO exposure) of Abell 52. It was the very first thing I tried to get. As you can see, there are no galaxies in this shot. Why? I looked up this same field of view to find it way off center of the Hercules galaxy cluster. I don't know by how much, but it's right at the edge (the bottom right of the photo is where the cluster star to begin). Also in this picture are many, many dead pixels. Why? Because I was dumb and turned on the 5-shot continuous mode which (at the time) I didn't know turns off the noise removal. So here's a nice picture of nothing with dozens of dead pixels. They all form angular lines, too. From this I bet you could tell how off your tracking system is off by (I mean the mount itself, not how I was saying earlier that the 80mm isn't aimed at the correct object).
Those who are hard core in love with the sky just can't let go. It didn't take too long for me to find this new stuff, did it? Clouds drive me to the computer in search of astro-beauty. So, I have some questions...are you now taking a photo class? AP? I know you don't have Photoshop, so are you doing all your processing in GIMP still? You know if you want to you can still borrow the laptop (it's not getting any use right now) and then you can use Maxim and PS with all the little actions to enhance photos. These images are just jpgs, I'll bet the tiffs or raws are pretty awesome.
You definitely have M21 at 11 o' clock to the Trifid. I am surprised by the nebulosity you picked up between M8 and M20! Awesome. I am surprised, too that you got NGC 7000- I can just make out the Mexico part of it, then it's easier to follow it back upwards. So, just to make sure I get it, the last picture is the original of the M51 above it? Pretty big difference!
I bought a T ring for my Cannon DSLR body and took it back out to AZ when I went in August, hoping to mimic what you did, but that's when I discovered that the telescope electronics were fried and it couldn't track. So now I have to wait until Thanksgiving to try again. :-(
Well it's great that this site is still getting some attention! Now that I know that, I think I will go ahead and post a few processed photos from AZ! I actually had them done for a while, but over summer they just sat on my hard drive when I was camping, working, studying, etc etc. Anyways, here's some compiles that I finished. I think this will still be my medium for photo sharing for now on because everyone can access it, and I won't be clogging up any one's emails!
NOTE: For starters, I will just upload the best of them, and the ones that I actually finished processing. So there are more, but who knows when I will get to those!
Alright, here we go...
Obviously, you know exactly what this is. It's a wide field image of both the Lagoon and the Trifid Nebulae. I think there are even some small NGC globulars, but they are generally unnoticeable.
I have to admit myself, this is an awesome shot. I thank your 80mm scope's short focal length, and my DSLR's wide APS-C sensor for this result.
Gosh, I think that's only like 2.5 minutes...so if you think about it it could be WAY better than this!
This was a real treat. I thought the N. America was going to be too far of a stretch for my entry-level DSLR. But after some touch-ups of a single 30s exposure, I got this:
Of course the output color image was originally green, due to my camera's day-time design. You can tell this is colored because the stars are more pink-blue-ish. I think cropping might have helped?
Ah, here's one that had little to no chance...I thought that at first because of the demoralizing previews I saw on the camera's screen. The brown background, the tiny, faint galaxy, the noise, the dead pixels...all were deterrents from processing this image. But in an effort to use it for my AP Photo project, I did some cropping, removed the nasty background color, and *tried* to remove some noise. As you can see, there is still a lot still here. Hey, I'll let the original and this speak for themselves.
I know it's still crappy, but remember this is a crop-zoom, by a factor of 2.8x
So if you can imagine, if I had 2.8x the telescope focal length, I'd be able to get the whole thing in the frame without loosing quality to crop-zooming. Can you imagine that? It would be awesome!
<<<I'm going to have to cut this short for now, it's late. I will upload the rest later!>>>
Hi Chris! Yes, I have been coming here occasionally to see if anyone has posted either on this page or in their observing logs. Glad to see some new activity! I took the image you posted below of Cygnus and tried to magnify it to see NGC 7000 but it just got pixelated. Probably your hi-res photo shows something better. Awesome way to coax the Milky Way out of the light-polluted skies here! Are you ready for Gladwin, Part 2? The Great Lakes Star Gaze is coming up soon, Sept. 14-16. Astronomy at the Beach (Kensington Metropark) is the weekend after that, Sept. 21 and 22. And then the next 2 Fridays I will be doing charity planetarium shows at 7-8 pm for our blood donors, with observing after each program if it's clear. I would love your help if you are available! Same goes for Zach, Alison, Richard if any of these folks wander on this post.
Sad news continues for the damage done by the lightning strike out at DPO. My telescope mount electronics are fried. So is the Pier Tech. In addition, the rolling shutters, Z Boost system, generator, solar charge controller, and one inverter are damaged either partially or totally. We are still finding things that are not working. Imagine if we had been out there when the bolt came down!
-Mrs. Herrold
Hello?? Does anyone even read this anymore?
Anyways, I was out on one excellent night trying out a quick experiment, after noticing an increased amount of stars near the Cygnus region, and seeing the Veil nebula for the first time in my own backyard, to see if the Milky Way exists right in our backyards! It sounded crazy at first, so I just let some time pass. A week later, I'm out, taking a few pics. Initially, in the preview screen, I see something odd. "Can it be?" After some quick processing, I almost couldn't believe what I saw. There it was! In all it's glory, the Summer Milky Way was floating right above me. What really gave it away were four distinct features: A faint vein streaking across where the MW should be (not labeled), the Scutum Star Cloud, the Messier 24 star cloud, and the Lagoon Nebula. Here, I'll let the pics speak for themselves. Compare these two pics. One taken in my yard, and another taken during my annual "Up North" trip. They both show!
There! See what I mean? It's great, yes, but don't forget that it took a 30 second exposure to get the results for our MW. With that in mind, don't expect to see the MW naked eye. If anything you might spot in on a superb night near the lake. But what does this suggest? Be my guest to elaborate. It could be a downsize in local pollution, outstanding seeing conditions, or maybe this is the first time I've noticed.
Noticed this on August 11. No Moon.
-Chris
Here's some more evidence:
The Milky Way is obvious in this shot of the Cygnus region. You can clearly see the faint band stretch across the sky. It is possible that the North America Nebula and the "Great Rift" are both seen in this exposure.
Check out this awesome website!! You can write using galaxies!
APB on all borrowed items: Alison, you have an image processing DVD of mine. Gentlemen, I think at least two of you have borrowed books to do your observing lists and/or Moon projects. I need these back asap, please. Today or Monday would be nice.
Chris, I found your history textbook in the hall outside my door yesterday afternoon.?? It's in my room.
Could we please meet for about 30 minutes next week on Wednesday after the exams are over? I would like to discuss everything I can think of re: packing and planning for the AZ trip and answer any questions you may have. I will be flying to AZ on Thursday night, so it will be your last chance to talk to me.
I have attached 2 important documents for you re: the trip. One is a questionnaire I would like you to fill out (you can do this together if you wish) re: what you eat. Please have this done by next Wednesday at the latest, and either repost it, or send it to me on e-mail. The other is a packing list.
Bob Berta sent this message to me yesterday- I thought I would share it with you: ...had good transit viewing at all of the various spots around S/E Michigan...cloudy in the early part but then cleared up. Had 150 at Stony Creek park where I was. About 1000 at Kensington. Not sure how many at our Stargate Observatory...but an article about the event there was picked up by CNN.
I was so busy I barely could breath...I did get one single shot that isn't that great but at least I proved I was there (attached).
Bob Berta
June 6 The good times just keep on coming. We had an awesome Transit of Venus observing session so I am adding it as only the second required observing log for this semester, since Richard and Alison have not been able to do much observing this quarter.
Is it possible for one of you to post a Transit of Venus image in our showcase somewhere with a caption? I think this would be a really high interest item!(Even if you need until tomorrow to do it.) Today I expect you will do the final fixes to our awesome showcase, then get to work on many items that are due SOON! Take a look at the grade book for a comprehensive list of what you are supposed to be doing. Later today or early tomorrow I will do the next big dump of grades into it. We have all been quite busy in the last few weeks, but now's the time to get your images posted to your wiki pages, with complete information!! See the April 2 posting for what should be on each image. Remember to add titles to the image, as well as website links if you are using them. (Richard, get the link for where you did the mosaic!)
Exciting News!! I have managed to acquire some funds (from some anonymous RATs of ages past) to rent an additional telescope or two for your trip to DPO. So I will try to get a few more Dobs for you, although of more modest size. Unless you tell me that you don't want them! I don't have a huge amount of money to invest in this, so we'll see what we can get when I get down there.
FYI: You have until Monday to get the 4th quarter stuff done, but then I have to get some final grades assembled, since I am flying to AZ on Thursday night next week, and have to have everything in to the office by that morning. Although the showcase was part of your final assessment, you still need time to work on the tutorial narrative and bibliography. (See May 29 post) And I don't want a first draft of that on Wednesday when I have to grade them! That leaves no time for you to do any fixes I suggest for a better grade.
Zach and Alison, would you please write to me and tell me what piece you are doing? I know Richard is doing mosaicing, and Chris is doing HDR. Alison, I still expect to see Venus in this quarter's portfolio, even though it didn't make the showcase.
Finally, I am inserting the article from the Grosse Pointe News here, so you can use it to send to people.
Happy May 11110 (in binary code!) Here is your last project. I embedded it as a MS Word doc so you can just use the doc to follow the hyperlinks directly and type in your answers.
Tomorrow at RATs we need to discuss our plans for the transit of Venus next week (Tuesday June 5). This will be your once in a lfetime (really!) chance to see and photograph it!
May 29 Welcome back after a great 3 day weekend that featured good weather, and, for some of us, heavy lifting! I am happy to report that our back yard now has a ton of new rock, a newly-constructed garden fence and a new landscape tie in the rock garden!
Reminders for individuals: Chris, did you do your online lunch order for the LBT day yet? Alison, I need your logbook!!! (Saturday??) And please check today about using the Art Dept. printer and let me know, OK? Richard, I put images of M7 in your Dropbox, since you said you didn't have a cluster to work with.
We are in the HOME STRETCH of this school year! So, with that, a few items of interest:
Part 1 of your final assessment grade: Today might be a good day for you all to trot down to the first floor and check out and measure your showcase. It is the one by the Counseling Ctr. that has Junior Jostens information in it. You need to find the images you want to display as your portfolio's finest, caption each, print and get them in the showcase by this Friday, or Monday at the latest. The reason being, no one will get to see them and talk to you about them if you wait until the last minute!
You need a title for the showcase, so people will know about your class. You can decide if you want to include a small paragraph about the class, explaining it. As far as selection of photos, it's fine if you want to include a few that you mined off the internet, but I think the most impressive ones will be the ones you took yourself, followed by the ones that were raw images from DPO, because they were not pristine starting materials. You should include variety! Try to include a planet, a nebula, a sky scene, a Moon shot, a galaxy, etc. I think a good number for each of you to aim at is 6 each. Black and white is OK for a few of them, since in some cases, that's all you have to work with. You need to experiment to see how large you can print these images before their quality degrades.
There are three approaches to how your organize the showcase: by person, by subject, or by random design! Mrs. Gast has background paper if you want to change it form the green that is in there now. We already talked a bit about that...but if you want something crazy you will have to go buy it. (I can reimburse you as long as you have a receipt!)
Here's what should be in each of the captions of your photos: Name of object, or title of photo Your name A line of description, non-technical, to add interest for the viewer. Examples: "I took this image of the Green Bank Telescope with stars raining into it while on the RATS field trip to NRAO in April." "Galaxy XXXX in the constellation Bootes is 65 million light years from Earth. It shows clouds of dark dust along its spiral arms." (I can help you on this if you want to run your rough captions by me.) A few lines about how the image was taken: total number of seconds through which filters, what telescope and camera used, and if needed, the internet site you mined for the raws. Readers will not know your shorthand abbreviations so you should spell out red, green, blue, etc. In general, you should check EVERYTHING in the showcase for proper grammar, spelling and punctuation.
Part 2 of your final assessment grade: Each of you are to adopt a certain type of imaging technique and create a document showing examples and step by step instructions (with proper grammar, spelling and punctuation). This should be a stand-alone document made either in PowerPoint or Microsoft Word. For one page or section of this I would like you to compile a list of all software programs you worked with over the course of the semester, including non-imaging software. At the end of the document I would like you to compile a list of resources you used over the course of this semester to learn IP. Please use a source like NoodleBib to present the references in proper format. (Yes, really, I am serious! Ask Mrs. Villegas for help if you have not done this before.) These references can be people, DVD's, software help sections or tutorials, books or websites. More references convinces me to give you a better grade, so don't stop at some preset minimum in your head, like 5. If you only used 5 in the whole semester, I don't think you invested in learning as much as you should have!
I would like to know in writing, by the end of this week, which section of IP you are going to do, so please talk about it and decide what each of you wants.
Finally, I found a great new observing site over the weekend that I would like to share with you: Astro Bob. Coming tomorrow: Your final project!
May 23
Bob Berta gave us a new present for image processing: a noise reduction program. I will put it in your Dropboxes later today. He also gave me a link to another free noise reduction program: http://pixinsight.com/doc/legacy/LE/index.html
Yesterday was a great time, as was last weekend! And more fun to come on Thursday, when the TV crew arrives! But remember, there is much work to be done. Coming next week: your next project and the "final exam" details. And we need to start thinking about photographing the Sun and transit of Venus on June 5.
If it is clear today after school I can stay and we can try again to photograph the Sun. Any takers? I got some tips now for how to maybe successfully shoot through the PST.
Zach, I put the Saturn movie in your Dropbox, as you requested.
How are those Moon projects coming??
May 17
Here is the link to the observing site for this weekend. Saturday still looks like the better night: http://www.rivervalleyrv.com/
May 13 Did my observing list today like a good little astrophotographer
May 11 Today the Dropbox Fairy has been hard at work, attempting to make digital movies of all the planets we filmed last night. I will put Venus, Saturn and Mars in your Dropboxes once I find a way to transfer these huge files! Then you can duke it out as to who does what images. See if you can observe tonight- it will be clear!! Finally! Note: The next Iridium flare (mag -7!) will be Tuesday evening. This is a great astrophoto opportunity that would - really- take just a few minutes. I can't believe we all missed it last night! And next weekend....Gladwin? Remember- I would like to see some observing lists Monday!
May 10
Maybe I am missing something, but I can seem to find any observing lists posted anywhere just yet, even though I asked you to get them to me by this Friday, and I also have been reading in daily logs that at least some of you have worked on them...so maybe let's shoot for Monday, since I dumped a bunch of items on you this week?
Don't forget to tell me when you have placed your lunch order, so I stop nagging you!
So...the Astro event is out for the Scout ranch. First, it is this Saturday, not next Saturday. Second, it is a closed event- unless you are an official club member, you cannot go. So, we need to consider plan C. We will talk about it at RATs today- by then, I should have some other information.
You may have noticed a major update on grades. For those of you who have posted 4th quarter images, I have put in the points for them "as is" at the moment. Many of the images are missing information (see April 8 post below for what it should contain), or the image looks like it's B&W or still needs work. We can go over these individually, maybe at RATs or after school someday soon.
It's supposed to be clear tonight- anyone up for an observing night? I was thinking of trying to do the video of the planets Saturn and Mars so we can use Registax to transform them into amazing images, like what we are getting with the Moon. We also may be able to image/observe some new springtime objects, and maybe get the supernova still visible in M95.
Zach, the Dropbox Fairy has put the NRAO slides you took in your Dropbox! Some are quite usable, but I hope you documented where you pointed the camera because without a starting point, it's going to be tough to ID the constellations, etc. I think I shall call your first image, "Sky Fishies". Looks like you had a bit of camera wobble on that one! :-0
May 8
Here is a fun REQUIRED thing for you to do: When you have completed the form, e-mail me or post it here on the wiki or on your daily log so I know it is done. We visit Mt. Graham on June 23. They want your lunch order! Each of you have to do this individually. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFg0NkRKN0FXbFJCQWZwZzNHYV9mLVE6MQ
I have some thoughts on the partial solar eclipse that is to take place on May 20. We, in theory, should be able to view it in the last few minutes before sunset, from 8:21-8:54pm. I have some mylar eclipse glasses that you may be able to tape over a camera lens to get a photograph of it. Alternatively, the big 10" solar filter for the school SCT could be held over one of your Dobs to shoot an image through your telescope! This, however, is a 2 person operation. Happily, this is on a Sunday evening so you could potentially travel somewhere to get a clear sightline all the way down to the horizon. I mention this now so you can do some advance planning. Of course, we always have the Michigan weather to contend with but you will want to have a plan in place and the necessary equipment with you in case the weather cooperates. While we are on topic of solar observing, we could try again on a sunny day after school to do some solar photography. I got some new ideas of how we may be able to shoot through the PST after the FAAC meeting, and we didn't try to do images of sunspots through Big Blue, did we?
I am really excited to see how your Moon video images turn out. When you use Registax or another program to stack and reject the images, I would like you to make a note of how many good images were actually used in the final image you process. We could now potentially do some video of Mars and Saturn using the same technique (it would take a lot less time!).
Bob Berta is coming on MAY 22, a Tuesday after school. SAVE THE DATE! Please start assembling your "how do I...?" list. Someone suggested I try to get a GP News article about your asteroid class, so I may invite a photographer/reporter or at least shoot a few photos of him working with you. Please ask your parents if this would be OK to have your photo published in the GP News.
And now, the telescope news: I heard back from Frank. He does have a 10" Dob that can rent for the week at $50. But the 12" Dob cost $140, which I may point out is a higher price than the 17.5" Dob. So, this seems a no-brainer. If we rent both the 10" and the 17.5" the total price is $190/4 = $48. Is that our plan? Of course, in the meantime, he may acquire some more smaller telescopes or sell the ones he has now. So...maybe the way to do this is to set a price limit that we can go up to- say $50 each, and get what we can at the time. Could you please discuss this and see if that is a workable number for you? Or, if not, what is?
May 7 Here is your Moon Project! I have books and maps to help you out. Also there are great resources on the web, and even apps that can get you started. More on Moon aids tomorrow.
For your section of the Moon, I would like you to do the following research:
1. Find an identifiable feature, like a crater. Find out its name and diameter in miles or km. From that, calculate your image’s width and breadth in miles or km. Explain your work to me (what crater did you pick, show me where it is on the image, show me your calculation set-ups) (9 pts)
2. What other features besides craters can you see on this image? Possible features are rays, maria, rilles, scarps (escarpments), mountains, ringed plains, domes, flooded craters, central peaks, crater chains, wrinkle ridges and valleys. Maybe you can even find some other unusual object! Identify at least one of each of these on your image by making a Photoshop version of your image with objects identified by arrows or numbers. (12)
3. State the orientation of your image. Is N or S up? Is E or W to the right? (2)
4. Add a labeled version of your image to your photo gallery with a detailed caption containing the information in points 1, 2, 3 above. (7)
Project total is 30 points!
Coming soon: Comet, Supernova and Minor Planet projects (less meaty). Also, some thoughts about the upcoming partial solar eclipse May 20, iridium flares and ISS transits.
No word yet from Frank about Tscope rentals. Also, I will let you know about a Bob Berta date when we have it.
May 4 So far we have decided we would like to rent 2, 12 inch dobs assuming that they are about 800 dollars to sell.
May 3 Richard- I gave you M83 in your dropbox since it turns out I only took one image of M64- maybe put it on your observing/imaging list for this summer?
May 2 We need to come up with some choices for Bob Berta's return. Here are the dates he gave me: May W9, Th10, F11, Tu22, F25. Please discuss this and give me 2 choices, in order of preference, TODAY. Thanks.
As far as this quarter's images, don't worry about doing a planet, but you can if you find something great...my images aren't so hot to work with, and you will have lots more to do. I do however want to know soon which section of the Moon you plan on doing IP on- because I am going to ask that you do some lunar research on the image! It would be nice if each of you could post at least a raw image on your gallery page soon so that I can begin working on your "Moon project". :-)
I have a project that I would like you to begin working on now, for 2 grades. I want you to create 2 lists of objects that you would like to observe at DPO (either optically with binos or telescope, or imaging with the 14"). Here is what I would like on the lists:
List 1 Dark time objects. These would be objects you observe the first 1-3 days at DPO, June 18-20. I would like at a minimum 16 objects on this list. Arrange it in order of when it makes the most sense to observe (usually by RA). If you have a far S object, observe it as close to transit time as possible! The S limit for DPO is about -45 deg dec for the observatory telescope and about -53 deg dec for outdoor observing. On the list I would like: Object name, type of object, RA and Dec, magnitude if known. Good "dark time" targets are diffuse and dark nebula and faint galaxies and PN. Remember to see where the Moon is on each of these dates so you know where the "zone of avoidance" is!
List 2 Grey time objects for dates in the latter half of your DPO stay. As above, 16 objects but here include brighter objects such as PN, binary stars, planets, bright galaxies far from the Moon.
Everyone must submit their own lists.
Preliminary grade is 40 points *per list* = 80 points of this quarter! I will critique the lists and get back to you with suggestions if I see problems. Use Stellarium or Starry Night to assemble your lists. I have some good observing books you can borrow if you don't have an idea of where to start- remember the lat/long of DPO is below (April 18 post). Begin by determining the times of the end/beginning of twilight at DPO on the dates you select- note time zone below. Starry Night is on the computers in my classroom and in the SCI 201 computer lab.
Please assemble your lists using Excel (preferred because you can sort by RA and dec) or MS Word (table format) and e-mail them to me by next Friday, May 11. I will be throwing some more projects at you soon, so don't procrastinate too long or you will be overwhelmed!
May 1**
So maybe I did not make myself clear enough....for the Moon this quarter I would like ALL of you to take a sequence from what we filmed with the Astrovid and use Registax and then whatever else you want to make a spectacular Moon image. I know Chris has been working on this some...what about the rest of you?? Registax is a free download! (But not for the Mac. However, Zach, you can use the school laptop to do this part!)
I have put all the pictures I have in your Dropboxes except for Chris - I don't have M22- can you pick something else?
And also Richard - I still have to give you M64. It's on my other computer.
I have made the following reservations for us:
Wednesday June 20 - Amado, AZ
Tour Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory SAO- Mt. Hopkins $7 each Must be there at 8:45 am. Bring your own lunch plus jackets, return off the mountain at 3pm http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/facilities/flwo/about.html
Sat. June 23 Safford, AZ
Tour Mt. Graham – LBT, Vatican Observatory, sub mm radio telescope We will start very early morning, since this is a long drive, and a full day. Reserved for 6! (my husband will accompany us to help with driving) $40 each, includes a box lunch. http://www.eac.edu/discoverypark/mgio.shtm
Mon. June 25 1 pm Mirror Lab, $8 per person
Tucson: Tour the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab reserved for 5 on my credit card $40 paid
New Mirror lab T-shirts will be available! http://mirrorlab.as.arizona.edu/
And now for the exciting news- I found a place where we can rent a telescope (or two, if you wish)
The way this works is these are used telescopes for sale, and they rent for one week at 10% of their sale price.
So, here are a few examples:
a 17.5" Dob for $130 for 7 days 130/4= $33 each
a 4" Explore Scientific refractor with a G5 Celestron (tracking) drive (but not GOTO) $165 165/4= $42 each
Or perhaps if you want to go small we could rent a few 10" Dobs- but you will have dark sky- why not go for the most glass you can afford?
If cost is a constraint, you could choose to individually (or 2 of you) rent a telescope. Talk about this and decide, then I will reserve something for you. If you want I can inquire about the cost of smaller telescopes.
I found a couple new links on the Starizona site that you may want to explore:
These are plugins for Photoshop that have free downloads for the trial version. They won't let you save the final version, but maybe you could grab it with a screen shot.
http://starizona.com/acb/downloads/videos.aspx Starizona video tutorials
These are on YouTube.
BTW, Alison, you still have my two DVDs on image processing- could you please return them or maybe one of your other 3 colleagues would like to borrow them?
We need to resolve a few dates for Bob Berta's final return to help us...I need Alison tennis schedule!!
And the good news is....WE FINALLY GOT THE MOON ON VIDEO!!! Now I need a few of you to get to work digitizing it, then splitting and editing video segments.
I meant to add Alison's find form a while ago- just stumbled actross it again: http://www.astronomyphotos.com/PhotoshopTechniques1.htm
April 18 In 4 days (April 22, this weekend) we will have the Lyrid meteor shower. It will be dark time and if clear a great time for you to go out and try to catch a meteor on you camera (or, someone can borrow my school manual film camera with a cable release). I also have tripods available if any of you need them! You should also note that the Sun is pretty active these days due to a large active area rotating towards us...so maybe this weekend or next week we will have a chance to see some aurora- it sounds from your observing logs that Liggett would be the place to try to photograph either meteors or aurorae. And, if possible, we should still try to find M95 and image the supernova!
Re: this quarter-
You ALL should make time each day to do your class logs- get yourselves organized and use the last 5 minutes of each class to do them daily. Also put some detail in them. No- for 4 days in a row- "I updated my logs, or , "I sticky-noted". WHAT did you sticky-note? Which logs (type and date) did you update? Remember - if we did an observing night and you would like to use the next day for a tutorial- just make a note of it in your log! Say : tutorial because of observing night last night. No Chris, that doesn't mean that you only have to work in class 2 days every week! :-) Let's be reasonable with that privilege!
A reminder that class time should be used for just that- not texting or mindless wandering on the internet... Last quarter taught us all a lot. I would like you to continue the process of posting your images (preferable raw and final) on your pages. Please don't clear out the ones you have there now! I will be tossing some more projects at you this quarter, starting next week- it won't just be a repeat of last quarter. More later on my plans for the final!
A few things we can be working on right now: 1. Selection of which objects you would like to image this quarter. 2. DAILY LOGS! 3. Specific questions for our meeting with Bob Berta next Tuesday (our half day). What don't you know how to do?? 4. For some of you, learning to use Photoshop and Maxim more. 5. I have the video which we took last observing night. Let's see if it really worked this time- if so, one of you is going to digitize it using the software on my school laptop. Then we are all going to take different sections of that, video- edit it, and use Registax to build images.
A few more of my thoughts.... Towards the end of the quarter I will be asking you to work collaboratively on assembling imaging lists for the 14" telescope in AZ. This will require that you use Starry Night or Stellarium to set the location to DPO, determine when it is dark, and build a queue of objects for each date. You should all have 25% input on what gets imaged. You should also think about when to image each object- you want to do it as close to the meridian as possible. Also, you want small slews between objects to minimize refocusing time. Assume we will use the Hyperstar the entire time, so you will need images that will be big enough to be seen- the FOV of the Hyperstar is 73.2 X 49.1 arc minutes- translated that is very roughly 1.2 X 0.8 degrees. So, a planet or a small planetary nebula (PN) really doesn't work.
A few helpful stats: I usually take 30 images in each filter, because after that, the signal to noise ratio (S:N) doesn't really improve significantly. The best color ratio for images taken with my CCD camera is R:G:B = 1:1.2:1.5. That's because all CCD cameras are biased towards being more red-sensitive. If you balance out your images using this ratio, it will be as close to "optically correct" as possible. The coordinates of Desert Peak Observatory are: latitude 32d 35' 51.18" longitude 111d 15' 29.28" W elevation 2074' or 632m time correction from UTC: - 7 hours (So, if it is 2h 30m (2:30am) in Greenwich , it is 19h 30m in AZ (7:30pm, the day before!))
As you know, this is the last week of the quarter. So that means you should have your IP portfolios completed for each of the types of images you needed to do during this quarter. AND posted to your wiki page! A reminder: for each image you need with it: The Image Name! 1. when and where it was taken (or, if an archive, where you got the raw image files (include a hyperlink to the site)). Archives usually include the "where and when" info. (3 points) 2. the equipment used to take it - telescope (if applicable) and camera type (this should also be supplied for archived photos), and what filters (if any were used) (3 points) 3. exposure times. If stacked, multiply the number of images through each filter x its exposure time = total exp. time for each filter (4 points) 4. the complete history of what you did to process the image, including programs used to image, stack and process the image (12 points) 5. the completed image itself = 18 points (this will be evaluated partially based on quality achieved, given what the beginning raw images(s) were like
A reminder: these are the images I expect to see (at a minimum) with documentation in your portfolio: 1. a planetary image 2. a galaxy 3. a nebula 4. a star cluster 5. a sky scene image (wide field) or other (comet, aurora, etc) 6. the Moon 7. one image from a mined internet archive 8. one image that you personally have taken
You may combine categories above (for instance, 6 and 8, or 3 and 7), but I expect to see the accomplishment of the complete list above. Although the quarter ends this Thursday, the grades aren't due until after break, so you have until Saturday, April 14 to wrap it up. I will do final grades on April 15. Images over and above what is required can help pad your grade!
OTHER NEWS: Did you hear about the new supernova in M95? This is a galaxy in Leo, and very near Mars at the moment, and would make an awesome observing target as well as an imaging one.
I will grade the images in your portfolio once you have told me they are complete. I will be looking at them this week to give you some constructive comments.
March 23
Well, it has been quite a week, from astrophotographer Bob Berta's 2 hour tutorial guest appearance to our two meetings last night about NRAO and Arizona. As promised, I provide you with links of our options below. Please share them with your parents for our "trip of a lifetime" experience!
I have also reposted 90% of the handout I passed out at the meeting last night. You may want to spend today together looking at your options, thinking about what sounds good and what can be tossed away, etc. BTW, I did check out the possibility of renting telescopes and I don't think we can do it. So we may want to revisit flying with them...?
Details: Possible window of days to visit: June 17-26
New moon is the 19th
sample selected June 18/ return June 26 – via Phoenix (cheaper and faster than Tucson)
Southwest: $440 RT, nonstops both ways, two 50 lbs bags free each way
Food: estimate $15?? per day
Possible day trips:
Assuming 6 or less people with our Yukon at 16 mpg and $4/gallon gas:
These trips would cost:
Mt Graham LBT tour – a $40 charge / person, includes a box lunch $90 in gas/ # of people
Mirror Lab tour (a must!) $8 student price- In Tucson - $26 in gas/#
Kitt Peak tour has many options, from a free walk-around, to a $150 per person overnight imaging campout
90 mins. west of Tucson 180 miles $45 in gas/#
Mt. Hopkins is about $8, a definite must-see for the price! This is in Amado, AZ
Round trip mileage 179 miles $44.75 in gas/#
General “tweeking” estimate:
9 days food $135
airfare $410
gas, with every trip, assuming 5 per car $60
admissions for all trips (except Kitt Peak) $96
spending money for T-shirts, astro items, souvenirs??
Approximate total $700
Add more for spending money or side trips
March 20 Happy Vernal Equinox!!!
A reminder as we discussed last week: I want each of you to revise your image galleries to have the image information (date, telescope, place?, and camera) with it. Also, fix the images (RG) so they are open when you open the page. Finally, you should have listed what IP techniques you used to create each photo. Chris is farthest along on what I envision a gallery should look like when complete. AA has no text at all by the pictures!!!!! Finally, I keep hearing about all these images you are working on, but I don't see them anywhere! I like Chris' idea of showing the original and the final version. If they are not final, why don't you at least post where you are with the image, even if you expect to work on it further.
The quarter ends April 4. That is 12 school days after today. How are you doing on accomplishing your "one in each category" image for the final quarter project?? Strap on your jets and let's get more images posted!
Feb. 28
I am happy to see progress on your personal galleries (on the left index page). These will ultimately develop into your "end of year" portfolios. Don't forget to complete work on your observing logs and send them to me asap.
I put some comments on a few of your blog posts- note them.
I am bringing in my personal observing logbook today as an example of how you can embellish an observing log to make it more useful to YOU. And maybe more fun.
A Nice Resource..............
Here is a resource I like. Cloudynights I would encourage you to sign up and look through the forums section. Specifically the DSLR, CCD, and Planetary Imaging sections contain a wealth of knowledge. Clear Skies,JG A Quick Intro and Hello!
Good Morning Everyone! A big thank you to Ardis for inviting me to join this group of folks with similar interest. I do not believe most of you know me but I too am an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer. I hope to be able to share some of my experiences with astrophotography and astronomy. Also, I hope to be able to learn something from the folks here. No matter how much one knows in a certain subject like astronomy, astrophotography, chemistry, physics, etc. there is always more to be learned and discovered.
Let me introduce myself with a short background. My name is Jason Gibson. As mentioned above I am aMichigannative, born and raised nearFlint. By day I am a chemist and by night I am an amateur astronomer & astrophotographer. I have been involved in astronomy for a major portion of my life but took the leap into imaging about 10 years ago. I started with shooting basic photos on film. My skills evolved from fixed tripod wide field star trail photos to deep sky images of remote galaxies to high resolution planetary imaging. All forms of astrophotography can be rewarding but can also be incredibly frustrating. I know!
I am not an expert by any means and will not profess to be one. But I have developed skills, knowledge, and routines that work for me and allow me to create images of nebulae, galaxies, planets, etc. that I am happy with. I enjoy answering questions and if I do not know an answer I enjoy searching out the answer. I encourage folks to strive to continually improve upon what they already know and build on the basis that has been developed. This is true for everything and not just astronomy.
So, having said all that I shall stop rambling and give you an idea of the type of equipment and software I find suits my needs.
Imaging Setup
Mount – Orion Atlas EQ-G (w/ self mods & upgrades)
I have limited experience with both Maxim and Images Plus. I found early on that Deepsky Stacker performed well and I rely on this free software to calibrate, register, and stack my image data.
One note….. I am new to “Wiki” so bare with me while I figure this thing out. :D
Clear Skies!
JG News - February 27
Note that Jason Gibson, an astrophotographer from the EMU club, has joined our wiki. Read through his posts and go get the IP freeware programs he has that you don't have! Also, Jason will be meeting with us sometime to help us out! Stay tuned on the date. Jason also will be uploading a tutorial for us to try.
A reminder that I have a planetarium event on this Saturday and if clear your telescope assistance will be needed if you can make it, about 7:30 pm.
However right now the long range forecast doesn't look too promising!
I have added new files to all of your dropboxes. Some new ones from DPO last week: Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Comet Garradd. Some other files that some of you requested have also been added: M37, M44, M41. Sorry Richard, I could not get M47!
Can you please send to me your observing logs for these nights so I can add them into your grades?
2/2 school
2/4 Zach's house
2/9 school
and any others I don't know about that you have personally done...
I have also invited astrophotographer Bob Berta to our group. No word yet on if he will join the wiki, but he has volunteered to help us as well!
Also, a very nice resource worth every penny ($22) if you have photoshop or photoshop elements is Astronomy Tools.
Check out this website for what product you may want: http://www.prodigitalsoftware.com
I have this and I love it!
I will be at DPO on the nights of Feb. 23 & 24, FYI. But you can reach me anytime by e-mail (use the amacio address after today, during vacation).
Has anyone yet looked at the video tape to see if we got anything? That would be a nice task for today. And where is the video?? Richard, I put images of Omega Centauri in your Dropbox. You also need to go to the 3rd quarter info page and update it with information about your new telescope! :-)
Thursday Feb. 16
I hope you all had fun at the talk and book signing last night, especially those of you who visited Eastern Michigan University IN DETROIT!
A special request: Is there anything you really want images of that I don't already have? I will have maybe 1-2 nights at DPO next week. I plan to spend the first getting some planetary images, then maybe switch back to my old system of wide-field deep sky imaging. (It will be grey time.) I want to try to some images of Comet Garradd in the early morning sky.
Did you notice this oft-repeated phrase at Phil's talk last night: "it turns out that..."
This is an astronomy culture phrase used almost universally when explaining a scientific concept. When you hear other astronomers speak, it will begin to jump out at you!
Save this date on your calendars: Sat. March 5. If it is clear, I would like your help at school with telescopes for a VIP group. I will tell you more later, but it is going to be a great night if clear: Mars and C. Garradd at their closest, the Moon, Jupiter, Mercury, Venus and Saturn all in the sky. And that's before we see any stars!!
We will visit Starizona if you come out to AZ this June. It is a most awesome astronomy shop- not big, but the guy who runs it is an expert amateur and imager.
BTW, check your Dropboxes! The Image Fairy has filled them with goodies. :-)
Monday, Feb. 6 The weekend was mostly clear- did you observe? If so, please spend today getting your observing logs and blogs filled out about your weekend, and posting any images you were able to get. Tonight looks good, too. I have not gotten all the observing logs from last week with much detail...today??! Not only what telescope did you use, what did you observe, what did you image, dates, times, etc. (see below)
I would like each of you to build a new page for yourself off this main wiki page where you can begin to store your images and comments on them. Alison used Lightroom 3, that's the first I had heard of it. Let us know if you uncover good imaging resources. We found out, for example, that you can get a fully functional trial version of Maxim DL for 60 days (PC only). Go for it! Someday, you will realize that Maxim is your friend...once we all learn how to use it!
I received notice of this star party- want to go? It might be a nice outing for the RATs, too:
I am working on getting some astro imagers to join our wiki, or maybe we will go and visit them... See below, since some of you have not yet done what I posted on Friday.
Friday Feb 3. Today your first set of daily logs are due (that would be 5 of them), as well as the initial plan I asked you to complete. I have posted the form for the initial plan on the index at the left side of the page- it is called" 3rd quarter information and planning form. I have most of Richard's form (see the part you missed and fill it out for me, please!) Also try to write up some imaging and observing logs for what we did last night. Include date, times, location, targets, imaging instruments, telescopes used, eyepieces or barlows used (if any), and exposure times. Write about last night in your daily logs/ blogs, and detail what you did such as: I learned how to operate the school 10" SCT or, I took a 15 second guided exposure of M42 that made me to fall to the ground or, I learned how to turn M42 into the Moon! (Sorry, I couldn't resist!) Wow - didn't we have a great time last night?? Chris and Richard, be sure to post some of your photos from last night on the wiki so that everyone can see them!!
It is critical that you keep track of what you tried and if it did or did not work, so that the next time you are working, you have a record of notes that will help you. In Astronomy we say, "If you didn't write it down, it did not happen." So following in the spirit of Galileo (whose birthday is this month, BTW), write it down!
This weekend we have a *chance* at some clear sky and it's bright time so it would be a great weekend to go out and shoot the Moon. Who has an iPhone? I have an iPhone adapter that you can put on your telescope and the Moon is the most excellent target for this!
I am also going to be sending you an invitation to get Dropbox. Look for it on your e-mail! This is a great free way to transfer huge files back and forth. I would like each of you to start a gallery of sorts or each image you worked on- regardless of how well it turned out. It will be a record of what you have accomplished or have tried to accomplish. You can do this by adding a new page to this wiki- try it out and then move all your images to that page. Give it a descriptive title so we can see whose page it is.
D-1: This is a very magnified version of a YSO that is one of the few "variable nebulas" in the sky. You can make all those little white dots go away by using the despeckle command under Filter/Noise/ in Photoshop.
New processed image of jupiter with 3 aligned color images
-Richard
Welcome Astromasters!
Adios.
-C
5/26/17
So amazing, Chris….I miss this.
Here's something a little different. Another "artsy" picture if you will. It's the core of the MW as seen from DPO, pasted behind the mountain range seen from Kitt Peak.
Clear Skies,
-C
Very cool Moon. It almost looks like art, not reality.
Hello again.
Those are some pretty cool videos of the asteroid/dwarf planets. The comet video was really awesome, I think it would be interesting to see color in it. Looking forward to see those film exposures; 800 speed should be plenty.
Can't say I was disappointed with the meteor storm, because I knew it was too good to be true. I went outside for a few minutes anyways and spotted a single streak in the East at 11:30PM ET heading South away from Cygnus, so it's possible it was from the new "storm." I took another look at my HDR Moon and decided maybe it wasn't bright enough, although it looks good on my screens. I boosted the earth-shine by 50% and added some more effects, including a ridiculous unsharp mask that yields an interesting look.
Clear Skies,
-C
May 24, 2014
DPO Update
Last night I spent quality time watching for the possible new meteor storm, and also taking extended sky exposures of an hour or more of Camelopardalis, which was the supposed radiant of the possible new shower. I used an Olympus OM -1 with - get ready for it- 800 speed film. Now the challenge will be finding a reputable place to develop it.
With the telescope I had great fun until 3am when the skies became overcast. I took multiple exposures of the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres, then used Maxim DL to animate their motion. i did the same with Comet 209P/ LINEAR, which was the donor of all the meteor streams that were supposed to put on a show last night. BTW, I saw few meteors, and am not even sure that any were from Camelopardalis.
This first video (left) shows the motion of Ceres against the background stars, from 8:51pm to 1:58 am MST.
The video on the right shows the motion of Vesta against the background stars, from 8:53pm to 2:02 am MST.
The last video I made shows the motion of Comet 209P/ LINEAR from 11:40pm to 12:43am. I have it on You Tube because the file is too big to upload here:
http://youtu.be/SInsOFi9rwg On it, each image is a 40 second exposure of the comet (note elongated nucleus due to tracking on the stars), with a 5 second delay between images. In effect, this translates roughly to about an image per minute. The video has two jumps or gaps when I reset the imaging, one from 11:44 - 11:47, and the other from12:09 - 12:23, but it represents just under an hour of movement.
A few things to note: cosmic rays striking the CCD chip, a meteor in one of the early frames, the changes in the comet's tail over time. I have only seen this rapid motion in one other comet- and that was many years ago. I was excited when I noticed it last night- I may try again tonight on some of these, if the weather cooperates.
The field of view of my CCD camera is 73.2 ' by 49.1'.
Welcome back Richard! This site has sort of evolved into a private forum between Chris and me.
But your input is, as always, warmly welcomed.
Is it ever going to get warm? I was in AZ last week and it was hard to come back to this!
While there, I was able to shoot images of the supernovae in M82 and M99, as well as one other galaxy (I forget). The SN in M82 is still very obvious so if you get a chance you may want to try viewing it. But don't get frostbite! See my other comments below re: the Moon and the Crab.
Well it has been a while since i have been on here but i figured i would check it out, I will leave some comments if i
have some time.
-Richard 03/10/14
Greetings from the arctic.
I finally had some free time during the weekend, and after looking at some un-edited astrophotos I decided to work on a mini project. It's nothing amazing, but this stuff just continues to astonish me.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be seeing...maybe because of how you said, different monitors? I see a waxing crescent moon and what looks like faint earthshine on the rest. Is that correct?
It's a composite image of shots taken at different times. One from July 16, 2011 and the other from January 28, 2012. Took some time combining them and getting them to scale correctly since they were taken at different angles, focal length, etc. Both shot with my a230 DSLR and the Zhumell Z8.
*EDIT: I realize that the results may vary on different monitor settings. If you can't see it, try tilting the monitor or look from a different angle.
Clear skies,
-C
Below is my last image from DPO, taken just after midnight, January 3, 2014. It's the ONLY image I have processed so far. 55 second exposures (17 of each) in R,G, B = 47 mins. total exposure.
With my new guiding set up I can now take longer exposures.
Wow! That's some serious color. Looks like there is less noise (I can't seem to find any) than some of the previous pictures too. I wonder what those squiggly lines are around the bright star 5'clock from the center of the nebula are...result of wind/vibrations perhaps?
Yeah, could be. Funny thing is, I was doing this while shooting a one-handed video on my cell phone to show how I take photos at DPO. I was the least careful ever. You can see that many of the stars aren't exactly round and are blobby, probably artifacts from combining. If you want, you can watch the video from the link on my blog: http://blogs.gpschools.org/herrola/2014/01/. It's under the entry called Desert Peak Observatory. It may bring back some good memories and you can also see the improvements we have made since you were there. It's about 20 mins long.
Update: GLSG XI
I don't have much time to spend writing about the event, but I think this pic sums up the event well enough:
(I wish I had a wider lens!!)
Five minutes of one frame @ ISO 400, F/3.5
I've been doing wide field exposures wrong for so long...
Hello!
I'm glad to see this site is still up! Anyways, I've been trying something new pretty recently with the time I still have before college, and I think anyone with a nice astrophotography setup has to do this eventually! Since I still have the "borrowed" Maksutov telescope, I've been doing a little experimenting with mosaic imaging. I decided to try it after I read an article in S&T about mosaic imaging the full moon. The author used a digital recording camera (such as a DSLR or video recorder), a Schmidt-Cassegrain with a tracking mount, and some pretty basic software. The process was pretty self-explanatory, so I figured why not since I conveniently have in my possession a 5" Maksutov with a polar tracking mount, a good webcam, and a full moon. This was no walk in the park though...took me a good two and a half hours total to setup the scope, configure the drive, get the computer setup, find a mobile power source, and then another hour to get the footage. However, I think the worst of it was the mount. It's really jumpy, it doesn't track well, the motors are pretty weak, etc. I think anyone with a modest mounting system could easily bypass those difficulties, especially if they're not using some primitive hand-panel like the one on the ETX125. As far as capturing the image, you're doing the same thing I explained below with the Jupiter stacks. Only this time you take the finished stacks into a image manipulator and "stitch" the images together. I only had a few hours to play with that night so I only got a fraction of the moon, and the next day was a no-go. But so far, I'm pretty happy with the results. The resolution is incredible compared to some of my previous single-frame shots with the Z8.
Here's a side-by-side comparison of the unedited mosaic and a cropped single-frame image:
As you can see, the mosaic has great resolution, non-existent noise, and even some good contrast. Keep in mind too that I didn't do any more edited after the registax wavelets, meaning that I didn't touch contrast, brightness, unsharp masks, or light-levels. If I have more time in the future I will try to post a full mosaic to show how far this can go. I'm confident that anyone else could do this, and probably easier with better equipment and more time.
(Five stacks: captured with Sharpcap software, processed in Registax 6,and stitched together with GIMP 2.0. Equipment: Kodak 0.3 Mp webcam, Meade ETX125 Maksutov-Cassegrain on polar mode)
-C
Last night I had time for One set of images before the sky became totally cloudy! It was the long-awaited Whale.
I took some time to properly color balance this one. Some really cool things about it:
The Whale Galaxy is C 32 or NGC 4631. Note the companion galaxy above it, elliptical NGC 4627. Then find the bright star almost in front of the whale, at the 3pm position near the photo edge. The small blob underneath it is peculiar galaxy PGC 42772, an Sc type. I think I can actually resolve that shape, too.
That's very, very cool. IMO I think that's one of your best because you captured so much detail on the inside of the galaxy, and those other galaxies are easy to spot too! That background noise is pretty peculiar. I've never seen that before in any of the astrophotos (on this website). Is that a product of the camera or IP?
It's a result of the frame combine plus I don't dither the images. You commonly get these horizontal or vertical bands- Guess I didn't do so good of a job setting the dark point to where you can't see them. I did 20 sec. exposures, 12 each of RGB images and then stacked and processed in Photoshop. I used both Noel Carboni's and Bob Berta's tools.
Cloudy last night, and tonight's not looking much better. (It actually cleared sometime between 3 and 4 am but it's light here by 4:30, so, no joy.)
Hi from DPO. This is my gem on Night One- the Needle Galaxy, NGC 4565 . Note companion galaxy NGC 4565A at bottom left.
Wow! That's really nice. I'm curious as to why the image is so red.
Probably just my image processing error, I don't know. I was using a 1:1:1 R:G:B ratio when it really should be more like 1:1.2:1.5.
Here is Comet PANSTARRS from this morning (5/7/13), taken while the sky was brightening about 4:45 am. I don't know if you can see it, but there is a an antitail extending faintly towards the left.
Hmm...the anti-tail isn't obvious but yes I can see it. I'm also wondering why the image has so much dark on the outside. Maybe it's not the camera, but a simple vignetting issue?
Its really not so much dark on he outside as I was trying to reduce the big blob of blue light under he comet- not sure why this happened, other than it was getting light. There was no fog on the glass or clouds that I could see, but maybe there was some light cloud cover that only the camera could see. If you enhance the blue blob the antitail becomes more obvious, just above that big white star at 8pm to the comet nucleus.
Well the reason why I brought that up is because I remember seeing the same thing on a lot of your pictures last year, and I am still suggesting that even with processing it might be some vignetting because wouldn't the entire image be enhanced uniformly? So my theory is that there might be a tad more light at the center of the image, which allows the brightness to increase so much after processing the image, if that makes any sense.
PanSTARRS at NRAO
PanSTARRS Update:
(This is a bad picture...I really wish the website didn't compress the images so much!)
With warmer temperatures and no wind, finding PanSTARRS was a breeze with my camera. I got out a good hour (or less) after sunset. To my surprise it was significantly brighter. The tail was much more noticeable, as well as the nucleus. I'd also like to mention that I could spot this thing with the naked eye, about 10 minutes before it would disappear behind the houses in the foreground. Also observed it in the telescope...Wow! I've never seen a comet that good before. I was impressed. The view with the 15mm was spectacular. Note that the comet probably didn't increase in brightness. I think that was my imagination. These pictures were also taken at a longer focal length than the previous picture.
Comet Ahoy!
Science fair was depressing, but suddenly I was brought back by this sighting:Skies cleared as predicted, so I was eager to see PANSTARRS with the limited window of clear sky. I took a lot of pictures, without knowing where this thing was. All I had was the altitude to work with, which was about 8-10 degrees in this picture. The comet was not visible to my eye, so I took many shots in hopes of capturing it at least one or two of them. After analyzing them, I found this to be the best picture as an example. I zoomed the image to show the tail which is easily visible in this picture.
Very nice Jupiter images! It has been pretty lousy weather here in Tucson. Only one night clear so far (Dec. 28) where I could do any imaging. Then a few days ago my computer decided to not boot. I had to make a trip to the Apple store in town but thankfully they got it up and running. I did get some new targets on the 28th. Above I have posted one of them, a pair of interacting galaxies in Canis Major, IC 2163 and NGC 2207.
Quick Update..here's another development with the webcam stuff.
I went out last night and was stunned by the marvelous seeing conditions that cannot be described in words. Instead, this picture by NASA is probably a better representation of what I saw last night:
And yes, I chose this one on purpose because that's exactly what I saw last night (minus Io itself). At the same moment, both the GRS and Io's shadow were in transit (at one point the shadow was directly over the GRS), which is sweet. Even though there were some passing clouds, they did not degrade the image quality at any point. Conditions were so good, I ventured all the way to 300x, with the only limitations being the cheap barlow lens. After a while, the clouds totally cleared around midnight, so naturally I brought my webcam out in the freezing winter air. In no time I was recording minutes' worth of footage for processing. This morning, I did a little magic with Registax and the GIMP:
Clearly, it's no where as good as the one above taken by Cassini on its way to Saturn in 2004, and it's not even as good as my previous ones (mainly because of the very noticeable contorted disk). Something that is better though is the size. I found out that up-scaling the image 200% with the Registax really makes the image less pixelated, although you won't really enjoy the benefits of a higher resolution, meaning that it won't be any sharper; it will just give you a larger file to work with.
Update 12/25/12
Merry Christmas! Happy holidays from Jupiter:
Chris,I couldn't see any moon in your image below so I put it in Photoshop and enhanced just the dark part of the image, and there it is! Something interesting is to see how it forms a line, which I think is showing its relative motion during the time you stacked the images.
Hello!
SharpCap is the program I am using to record the video from the webcam to an .avi file. To process the picture, you will still have to use other software to do the stacking and image selecting such as Registax, which was the program I used for the image below. Shoot! I thought the observing was this Thursday..oh well. I actually did a little observing myself and got some more footage to process later. Well, I hope things went well for you guys though!
EDIT: Processed this last night. Seems to look better by better seeing conditions. Note the moon, either Europa or Io.
Chris,
You are indeed an AstroMaster! It's an awesome image!
If it's clear tomorrow night (Tuesday, Nov. 13), I am going to do an observing night starting at 7 pm. I will probably only go 1.5-2 hours because of the frigid temps predicted, but that could be your chance to try the web cam on Big Blue.
It still is not perfectly collimated, but Zach took the new collimator and worked on the white Dob last week in RATs, so maybe that at least is improved. Does SharpCap do the stacking and image selecting?
Just in case anyone is still viewing this site, here's an update for you:
A simple webcam image of Jupiter, taken at my house on 11/11 early morning. One day I was looking at an article about webcam astrophotos and decided to do my own. I can't believe how easy it was! I just removed the factory lens, strapped the camera onto the focuser barrel, aimed at Jupiter, and captured a 15-second .avi file as the planet drifted across the field. Originally I was going to use a barlow, but this was actually too much focal length (nearly impossible to locate and record a long enough .avi) so I stuck with the normal 1200mm. The field is actually cropped down from the original resolution, which doesn't seem to affect the quality. This would be something I would love to try on the Big Blue, with its automatic tracking and longer f/ length, which would allow more of the planet to fit in more pixels. Like I said, it's real easy. I just strap on the camera with some lock ties, and hook it up to my laptop with some video recording software. I actually tried the free and extremely useful SharpCap program. I used my Z8 Dob and a 1.3Mp Kodak S101 webcam.
My favorite site for comet information is on skyhound:
http://cometchasing.skyhound.com/
It looks like you might also be able to see 2012 K5 LINEAR (second comet listed)
Hmm...can't say so because I wasn't really trying to look for the tail. It did look very stellar as the picture shows though. I may want to got out maybe tonight and see it? Depends...
Do you know of any comets in the sky within our reach?
Here is a photo of Comet 169P Hergenrother from last night, when we were observing it. I did not notice any directional shift in the coma,or a tail orientation, like this photo at the right shows. Did you?
Hey, that sure is a nice pic of Orion. Unfortunately, my only shot of Orion was extremely out of focus...probably because it somehow got moved or I didn't set it correctly because there is no focusing information (you have to guess the focus and hope it's right). So nothing there. I did however get very lucky with the focus on my first super-long, single exposure that is kind of like last year's image. IMO, this one is far more "clean" because I don't have to take twenty 30s exposures and combine them in a program. All the work was done in the camera. The only flaws were that the lens was set to 28mm instead of the wider 18mm, and the camera was shooting at medium resolution. This is 7 minutes at 400 ISO.
My next image is a surprising feature. After much trial and error over time (and experience in AZ), I have overcome the temptations of 'easy shooting,' meaning that I will not be shooting in burst mode (results in dead pixels, and low image quality), I will not shoot at high ISO, and I will not compromise white balance quality. So in this latest attempt, I got the Triangulum galaxy in this 275-second exposure. I've never done this before; shooting many, many long exposures like the other astrophotographers do. Until this, I though I could escape the difficulty with high ISO (reduces time to expose) and burst mode (doesn't require one to keep clicking the exposure after every exposure). But even though I did all of these things, it didn't come out quite as well as I'd hoped. It is okay, I guess. What I really need to do next time though is even more exposure time. Maybe like 5x longer or something.
Well, M33 is notoriously dim, even though it's mag is relatively high, it is very spread out, so I don't think that's too bad, considering. BTW, I am going to use one of your star trails pics as the opening pic on my Astro Unit 2 page under Current Studies. I am sure you don't mind.
You can just hardly see the weak spiral structure in this highly-developed image. I think more time would have done it, but my battery would beg to differ that night. Oh and this was through my 200mm telephoto lens.
So this one? This doesn't need a whole paragraph. It is what it is. Two images (one happens to be over exposed for the moons). Crap by my standards. Taken through the LX200 w/ barlow lens. Maybe it's the optics? Seemed nice through the camera EP.
Oh I forgot to talk about your M42. Yes that isn't bad. Without light pollution I bet that was very easy to process. It is very purple. I wonder why. Also, I don't know how you did it, but it looks like those stars are pretty focused to me. Very nice on that part. What does the original look like?
I can't find it at the moment, but the stars were pretty focused, and after all the problems we had with dew, etc.! Go figure. I don't know why it's purple, either. I didn't mess with the color.
I think the photo above is awesome! And only 2 images! How long was the exposure? Do you have the time on this? it would be cool to see which moon is which.
Oh, and here's one of my favorite pics that I took from this year's Up North trip to the thumb of MI. Adjusted contrast, saturation, and light effects.
Here is my best image of Orion from the Great Lakes Star Gaze X.
This is my best image for M42. It is really noisy because I tried to enhance the nebula and because it is only one 6 second shot.
Chris, Thanks for the updates on the image info. Maybe we can add some more glorious pictures this weekend at the Star Gaze! I'm bringing my camera and tripod. If I end up bringing the big blue, maybe we can piggyback on it.
My class is 13 right now, and I think maybe 5-6 of them came? I too was happy with the turnout. And having you and Zach there with your telescopes made it so easy for them to get a lot of observations. Thanks!
I'll let you know when I get some of these posted.
Hello Mrs. Herrold. What a great observing night we had last night! I think the turn out was great...better than I've seen before IMO. It was great to see that your students
(was that the whole class?) were eager to come out, and I think a few came early to help you? That's great if they did! I'm sorry I was a little late because I totally forgot! But no harm done though.
As of now, I'm on my other machine, which doesn't have my other pictures to post. The other pics will probably be wide-field images of the Milkyway or maybe some miscellaneous day-time shots that I thought were interesting. For now, I will inform you on the pictures:
As you already know, I was using your Orion 80ED refractor. If I eventually post the wide-field shots, they will most likely be shots taken with an 18mm focal length (some may differ though). All of these shots (except for M51) are taken at 3200 ISO on my Sony a230 DSLR, and all exposures (except for M51) are 30s frames. Some of these are crop zoomed too, like M27 and M51. The zoom factor on both are 2.8x.
As for M51, I don't have access to the original files so I can't tell you the exposure times (at the moment). If I had to make a guess it's probably a combination of 200 and 400 ISO with a total exp. time of ~7-12 minutes at most.
And about M11, I think I can still see the triangle you are talking about. To me I see the square, but the brighter stars in the cluster create a triangle that 'points' at 7 o'clock. And yes I too was impressed with the resolution...it was almost unexpected. I can only imagine how awesome these pictures may look like with your 14-inch!
Hi again! If you are reading this on Tuesday, we are going to do an observing night tonight with my new Astro folks. The sky is totally dark at 9:25, I told folks to come at 9:15 ish but I will be there earlier - if you want to come and bring your scope you are of course very welcome!
I love the pictures, esp. of the Swan and M27, one of my favorite targets. I also love how crisp the Wild Duck turned out- great resolution. Funny, to me it always looks triangular instead of square. The little cluster by M22 is a globular, NGC 6642. You can also just see the red giant (less purple) in M7.
Hi there! Yes I am taking a photo AP class, because I am just as interested as taking "artsy" daytime photos as those at night, and I want to learn more about daytime and eventually get into photoshop (when that part comes around). Yes, these are JPGs because the site won't accept TIFFs and they are HUGE files. I know, the Trifid/Lagoon is a pretty awesome shot IMO. Yes I know NGC 7000 is a little faint, but that's just a single 30s exposure...so I know it can be better granted more time! And yes that last shot is the original M51. In the crop-zoom, there is actually another galaxy: NGC 5198. It's a 13th magnitude galaxy that I've never detected visually, so that's cool that my camera caught it IMO.
I am so sorry to hear about your situation! I hope it won't be too much of a fuss to get it fixed! Yes, you got to try out your DSLR! It's way different but as I've experienced it's fun and pretty easy.
So here's some more shots for you.
You are looking at the Great Cluster in Sagittarius, which is what I think it should be commonly called, since it is so awesome. This is actually one of my clearest shots because you can't really tell that the ISO noise is interfering with the many milkyway stars in the background. I think I only adjusted levels for this single exposure. There is also an obvious NGC cluster about 2 o'clock from M22. I don't know what it's designation is but I know I've seen it before.
Something that I've noticed with my pictures (not just this one) is that the stars have some pretty bad purple fringing around neutral bright stars. This is obvious in the Trifid/Lagoon nebulae picture. I don't mean to bash your 80mm telescope, but when I was doing research on my new telephoto lens I saw that purple fringing anytime results with optical flaws. Something else that I am noticing is that the field is not totally flat. I cropped this shot to reduce the effect, but it is very apparent in the NGC 7000 photo. Notice how the stars smear away from the center of the picture. Just an observation.
So here's another picture like the M8/M20 shot. Once again both the camera's wide sensor and the short focal length work in tandem to get a similar result. So here you have both the Omega/Swan nebula and the famous Eagle nebula. This shot is weakly processed because all of my other attempts were either way to obvious or way to light in post-processing. So I went with the middle result. Again there is purple fringing on the stars. Maybe there is software to remove this? I will check that out. For now, this is it. What I think's amazing is that you can just hardly tell where the "fingers" are in M16. It is too small to crop, so I won't be able to pull it out. If only I had more focal length!
So here's another good one. You should be able to tell that this large cluster of whitish stars is the Wild Duck. To me the cluster almost looks like a square when viewed from far. Like many of my shots, this is just a single 30s frame with light processing. Only adjusted curves/levels. Something else that I am noticing is that there is a lot of dark nebulae in this picture! I didn't even see that before! Also, at the top there are a few trails which may be satellites.
This cluster should be easy. It's to the right of Sagittarius, and it is famous by a great Greek astronomer. It's the Ptolemy cluster, or M7. This was the easist of them all. The signal to noise ratio is such that you can't even tell I was shooting at a high ISO. I literately moved the slider in levels (the dark one). That's it. So also in the picture you can easily see dark nebulae to the NE and a little to the South. There is also a tiny NGC globular at 2:30.
I think this is was one of first images that I took when my camera was attached to the 80mm. It's M27, in a super-close crop-zoom of 2.8x the original frame. Obviously you can tell the blue and orangish shades. Did a lot of processing just to get it where it is, but I'm proud of the result! Another cool feature is the tiny white dwarf in the center! Single 30s exposure.
One more thing to share with you: This is a 12.5 minute exposure (200 ISO, so equivalent of a 1.56 minute 3200 ISO exposure) of Abell 52. It was the very first thing I tried to get. As you can see, there are no galaxies in this shot. Why? I looked up this same field of view to find it way off center of the Hercules galaxy cluster. I don't know by how much, but it's right at the edge (the bottom right of the photo is where the cluster star to begin). Also in this picture are many, many dead pixels. Why? Because I was dumb and turned on the 5-shot continuous mode which (at the time) I didn't know turns off the noise removal. So here's a nice picture of nothing with dozens of dead pixels. They all form angular lines, too. From this I bet you could tell how off your tracking system is off by (I mean the mount itself, not how I was saying earlier that the 80mm isn't aimed at the correct object).
Those who are hard core in love with the sky just can't let go. It didn't take too long for me to find this new stuff, did it? Clouds drive me to the computer in search of astro-beauty. So, I have some questions...are you now taking a photo class? AP? I know you don't have Photoshop, so are you doing all your processing in GIMP still? You know if you want to you can still borrow the laptop (it's not getting any use right now) and then you can use Maxim and PS with all the little actions to enhance photos. These images are just jpgs, I'll bet the tiffs or raws are pretty awesome.
You definitely have M21 at 11 o' clock to the Trifid. I am surprised by the nebulosity you picked up between M8 and M20!
Awesome. I am surprised, too that you got NGC 7000- I can just make out the Mexico part of it, then it's easier to follow it back upwards. So, just to make sure I get it, the last picture is the original of the M51 above it? Pretty big difference!
I bought a T ring for my Cannon DSLR body and took it back out to AZ when I went in August, hoping to mimic what you did, but that's when I discovered that the telescope electronics were fried and it couldn't track. So now I have to wait until Thanksgiving to try again. :-(
Well it's great that this site is still getting some attention! Now that I know that, I think I will go ahead and post a few processed photos from AZ! I actually had them done for a while, but over summer they just sat on my hard drive when I was camping, working, studying, etc etc. Anyways, here's some compiles that I finished. I think this will still be my medium for photo sharing for now on because everyone can access it, and I won't be clogging up any one's emails!
NOTE: For starters, I will just upload the best of them, and the ones that I actually finished processing. So there are more, but who knows when I will get to those!
Alright, here we go...
Obviously, you know exactly what this is. It's a wide field image of both the Lagoon and the Trifid Nebulae. I think there are even some small NGC globulars, but they are generally unnoticeable.
I have to admit myself, this is an awesome shot. I thank your 80mm scope's short focal length, and my DSLR's wide APS-C sensor for this result.
Gosh, I think that's only like 2.5 minutes...so if you think about it it could be WAY better than this!
This was a real treat. I thought the N. America was going to be too far of a stretch for my entry-level DSLR. But after some touch-ups of a single 30s exposure, I got this:
Of course the output color image was originally green, due to my camera's day-time design. You can tell this is colored because the stars are more pink-blue-ish. I think cropping might have helped?
Ah, here's one that had little to no chance...I thought that at first because of the demoralizing previews I saw on the camera's screen. The brown background, the tiny, faint galaxy, the noise, the dead pixels...all were deterrents from processing this image. But in an effort to use it for my AP Photo project, I did some cropping, removed the nasty background color, and *tried* to remove some noise. As you can see, there is still a lot still here. Hey, I'll let the original and this speak for themselves.
I know it's still crappy, but remember this is a crop-zoom, by a factor of 2.8x
So if you can imagine, if I had 2.8x the telescope focal length, I'd be able to get the whole thing in the frame without loosing quality to crop-zooming. Can you imagine that? It would be awesome!
<<<I'm going to have to cut this short for now, it's late. I will upload the rest later!>>>
Hi Chris! Yes, I have been coming here occasionally to see if anyone has posted either on this page or in their observing logs. Glad to see some new activity! I took the image you posted below of Cygnus and tried to magnify it to see NGC 7000 but it just got pixelated. Probably your hi-res photo shows something better. Awesome way to coax the Milky Way out of the light-polluted skies here! Are you ready for Gladwin, Part 2? The Great Lakes Star Gaze is coming up soon, Sept. 14-16. Astronomy at the Beach (Kensington Metropark) is the weekend after that, Sept. 21 and 22. And then the next 2 Fridays I will be doing charity planetarium shows at 7-8 pm for our blood donors, with observing after each program if it's clear. I would love your help if you are available! Same goes for Zach, Alison, Richard if any of these folks wander on this post.
Sad news continues for the damage done by the lightning strike out at DPO. My telescope mount electronics are fried. So is the Pier Tech. In addition, the rolling shutters, Z Boost system, generator, solar charge controller, and one inverter are damaged either partially or totally. We are still finding things that are not working. Imagine if we had been out there when the bolt came down!
-Mrs. Herrold
Hello?? Does anyone even read this anymore?
Anyways, I was out on one excellent night trying out a quick experiment, after noticing an increased amount of stars near the Cygnus region, and seeing the Veil nebula for the first time in my own backyard, to see if the Milky Way exists right in our backyards! It sounded crazy at first, so I just let some time pass. A week later, I'm out, taking a few pics. Initially, in the preview screen, I see something odd. "Can it be?" After some quick processing, I almost couldn't believe what I saw. There it was! In all it's glory, the Summer Milky Way was floating right above me. What really gave it away were four distinct features: A faint vein streaking across where the MW should be (not labeled), the Scutum Star Cloud, the Messier 24 star cloud, and the Lagoon Nebula. Here, I'll let the pics speak for themselves. Compare these two pics. One taken in my yard, and another taken during my annual "Up North" trip. They both show!There! See what I mean? It's great, yes, but don't forget that it took a 30 second exposure to get the results for our MW. With that in mind, don't expect to see the MW naked eye. If anything you might spot in on a superb night near the lake. But what does this suggest? Be my guest to elaborate. It could be a downsize in local pollution, outstanding seeing conditions, or maybe this is the first time I've noticed.
Noticed this on August 11. No Moon.
-Chris
Here's some more evidence:
The Milky Way is obvious in this shot of the Cygnus region. You can clearly see the faint band stretch across the sky. It is possible that the North America Nebula and the "Great Rift" are both seen in this exposure.
Check out this awesome website!! You can write using galaxies!
http://mygalaxies.co.uk/
June 8 Last day of classes!!!
APB on all borrowed items: Alison, you have an image processing DVD of mine. Gentlemen, I think at least two of you have borrowed books to do your observing lists and/or Moon projects. I need these back asap, please. Today or Monday would be nice.
Chris, I found your history textbook in the hall outside my door yesterday afternoon.?? It's in my room.
Could we please meet for about 30 minutes next week on Wednesday after the exams are over? I would like to discuss everything I can think of re: packing and planning for the AZ trip and answer any questions you may have. I will be flying to AZ on Thursday night, so it will be your last chance to talk to me.
I have attached 2 important documents for you re: the trip. One is a questionnaire I would like you to fill out (you can do this together if you wish) re: what you eat. Please have this done by next Wednesday at the latest, and either repost it, or send it to me on e-mail. The other is a packing list.
June 7
Bob Berta sent this message to me yesterday- I thought I would share it with you:
...had good transit viewing at all of the various spots around S/E Michigan...cloudy in the early part but then cleared up. Had 150 at Stony Creek park where I was. About 1000 at Kensington. Not sure how many at our Stargate Observatory...but an article about the event there was picked up by CNN.
I was so busy I barely could breath...I did get one single shot that isn't that great but at least I proved I was there (attached).
Bob Berta
June 6
The good times just keep on coming. We had an awesome Transit of Venus observing session so I am adding it as only the second required observing log for this semester, since Richard and Alison have not been able to do much observing this quarter.
Is it possible for one of you to post a Transit of Venus image in our showcase somewhere with a caption? I think this would be a really high interest item! (Even if you need until tomorrow to do it.) Today I expect you will do the final fixes to our awesome showcase, then get to work on many items that are due SOON! Take a look at the grade book for a comprehensive list of what you are supposed to be doing. Later today or early tomorrow I will do the next big dump of grades into it. We have all been quite busy in the last few weeks, but now's the time to get your images posted to your wiki pages, with complete information!! See the April 2 posting for what should be on each image. Remember to add titles to the image, as well as website links if you are using them. (Richard, get the link for where you did the mosaic!)
Exciting News!!
I have managed to acquire some funds (from some anonymous RATs of ages past) to rent an additional telescope or two for your trip to DPO. So I will try to get a few more Dobs for you, although of more modest size. Unless you tell me that you don't want them! I don't have a huge amount of money to invest in this, so we'll see what we can get when I get down there.
FYI: You have until Monday to get the 4th quarter stuff done, but then I have to get some final grades assembled, since I am flying to AZ on Thursday night next week, and have to have everything in to the office by that morning. Although the showcase was part of your final assessment, you still need time to work on the tutorial narrative and bibliography. (See May 29 post) And I don't want a first draft of that on Wednesday when I have to grade them! That leaves no time for you to do any fixes I suggest for a better grade.
Zach and Alison, would you please write to me and tell me what piece you are doing? I know Richard is doing mosaicing, and Chris is doing HDR.
Alison, I still expect to see Venus in this quarter's portfolio, even though it didn't make the showcase.
Finally, I am inserting the article from the Grosse Pointe News here, so you can use it to send to people.
Happy May 11110 (in binary code!)
Here is your last project. I embedded it as a MS Word doc so you can just use the doc to follow the hyperlinks directly and type in your answers.
Tomorrow at RATs we need to discuss our plans for the transit of Venus next week (Tuesday June 5). This will be your once in a lfetime (really!) chance to see and photograph it!
May 29
Welcome back after a great 3 day weekend that featured good weather, and, for some of us, heavy lifting! I am happy to report that our back yard now has a ton of new rock, a newly-constructed garden fence and a new landscape tie in the rock garden!
Reminders for individuals:
Chris, did you do your online lunch order for the LBT day yet?
Alison, I need your logbook!!! (Saturday??) And please check today about using the Art Dept. printer and let me know, OK?
Richard, I put images of M7 in your Dropbox, since you said you didn't have a cluster to work with.
We are in the HOME STRETCH of this school year! So, with that, a few items of interest:
Part 1 of your final assessment grade:
Today might be a good day for you all to trot down to the first floor and check out and measure your showcase. It is the one by the Counseling Ctr. that has Junior Jostens information in it. You need to find the images you want to display as your portfolio's finest, caption each, print and get them in the showcase by this Friday, or Monday at the latest. The reason being, no one will get to see them and talk to you about them if you wait until the last minute!
You need a title for the showcase, so people will know about your class. You can decide if you want to include a small paragraph about the class, explaining it. As far as selection of photos, it's fine if you want to include a few that you mined off the internet, but I think the most impressive ones will be the ones you took yourself, followed by the ones that were raw images from DPO, because they were not pristine starting materials.
You should include variety! Try to include a planet, a nebula, a sky scene, a Moon shot, a galaxy, etc. I think a good number for each of you to aim at is 6 each. Black and white is OK for a few of them, since in some cases, that's all you have to work with. You need to experiment to see how large you can print these images before their quality degrades.
There are three approaches to how your organize the showcase: by person, by subject, or by random design! Mrs. Gast has background paper if you want to change it form the green that is in there now. We already talked a bit about that...but if you want something crazy you will have to go buy it. (I can reimburse you as long as you have a receipt!)
Here's what should be in each of the captions of your photos:
Name of object, or title of photo
Your name
A line of description, non-technical, to add interest for the viewer. Examples:
"I took this image of the Green Bank Telescope with stars raining into it while on the RATS field trip to NRAO in April."
"Galaxy XXXX in the constellation Bootes is 65 million light years from Earth. It shows clouds of dark dust along its spiral arms."
(I can help you on this if you want to run your rough captions by me.)
A few lines about how the image was taken: total number of seconds through which filters, what telescope and camera used, and if needed, the internet site you mined for the raws. Readers will not know your shorthand abbreviations so you should spell out red, green, blue, etc. In general, you should check EVERYTHING in the showcase for proper grammar, spelling and punctuation.
Part 2 of your final assessment grade:
Each of you are to adopt a certain type of imaging technique and create a document showing examples and step by step instructions (with proper grammar, spelling and punctuation). This should be a stand-alone document made either in PowerPoint or Microsoft Word. For one page or section of this I would like you to compile a list of all software programs you worked with over the course of the semester, including non-imaging software. At the end of the document I would like you to compile a list of resources you used over the course of this semester to learn IP. Please use a source like NoodleBib to present the references in proper format. (Yes, really, I am serious! Ask Mrs. Villegas for help if you have not done this before.) These references can be people, DVD's, software help sections or tutorials, books or websites. More references convinces me to give you a better grade, so don't stop at some preset minimum in your head, like 5. If you only used 5 in the whole semester, I don't think you invested in learning as much as you should have!
I would like to know in writing, by the end of this week, which section of IP you are going to do, so please talk about it and decide what each of you wants.
Finally, I found a great new observing site over the weekend that I would like to share with you: Astro Bob.
Coming tomorrow: Your final project!
May 23
Bob Berta gave us a new present for image processing: a noise reduction program. I will put it in your Dropboxes later today. He also gave me a link to another free noise reduction program:
http://pixinsight.com/doc/legacy/LE/index.html
Yesterday was a great time, as was last weekend! And more fun to come on Thursday, when the TV crew arrives! But remember, there is much work to be done. Coming next week: your next project and the "final exam" details. And we need to start thinking about photographing the Sun and transit of Venus on June 5.
If it is clear today after school I can stay and we can try again to photograph the Sun. Any takers? I got some tips now for how to maybe successfully shoot through the PST.
Zach, I put the Saturn movie in your Dropbox, as you requested.
How are those Moon projects coming??
May 17
Here is the link to the observing site for this weekend. Saturday still looks like the better night:
http://www.rivervalleyrv.com/
May 13
Did my observing list today like a good little astrophotographer
May 11
Today the Dropbox Fairy has been hard at work, attempting to make digital movies of all the planets we filmed last night. I will put Venus, Saturn and Mars in your Dropboxes once I find a way to transfer these huge files! Then you can duke it out as to who does what images. See if you can observe tonight- it will be clear!! Finally!
Note: The next Iridium flare (mag -7!) will be Tuesday evening. This is a great astrophoto opportunity that would - really- take just a few minutes. I can't believe we all missed it last night! And next weekend....Gladwin? Remember- I would like to see some observing lists Monday!
May 10
Maybe I am missing something, but I can seem to find any observing lists posted anywhere just yet, even though I asked you to get them to me by this Friday, and I also have been reading in daily logs that at least some of you have worked on them...so maybe let's shoot for Monday, since I dumped a bunch of items on you this week?
Don't forget to tell me when you have placed your lunch order, so I stop nagging you!
So...the Astro event is out for the Scout ranch. First, it is this Saturday, not next Saturday. Second, it is a closed event- unless you are an official club member, you cannot go. So, we need to consider plan C. We will talk about it at RATs today- by then, I should have some other information.
You may have noticed a major update on grades. For those of you who have posted 4th quarter images, I have put in the points for them "as is" at the moment. Many of the images are missing information (see April 8 post below for what it should contain), or the image looks like it's B&W or still needs work. We can go over these individually, maybe at RATs or after school someday soon.
It's supposed to be clear tonight- anyone up for an observing night? I was thinking of trying to do the video of the planets Saturn and Mars so we can use Registax to transform them into amazing images, like what we are getting with the Moon. We also may be able to image/observe some new springtime objects, and maybe get the supernova still visible in M95.
Zach, the Dropbox Fairy has put the NRAO slides you took in your Dropbox! Some are quite usable, but I hope you documented where you pointed the camera because without a starting point, it's going to be tough to ID the constellations, etc. I think I shall call your first image, "Sky Fishies". Looks like you had a bit of camera wobble on that one! :-0
May 8
Here is a fun REQUIRED thing for you to do: When you have completed the form, e-mail me or post it here on the wiki or on your daily log so I know it is done. We visit Mt. Graham on June 23. They want your lunch order! Each of you have to do this individually.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFg0NkRKN0FXbFJCQWZwZzNHYV9mLVE6MQ
Now, on to some helpful Moon map links for your Moon photo project:
LRO Moon map http://target.lroc.asu.edu/da/qmap.html
The Full Moon Atlas http://www.lunarrepublic.com/atlas/
Lunar Map apps for Androids https://play.google.com/store/search?q=LunarMap
Lunar Map iPhone/iPad apps http://appadvice.com/appguides/show/moon-map-apps
I have some thoughts on the partial solar eclipse that is to take place on May 20. We, in theory, should be able to view it in the last few minutes before sunset, from 8:21-8:54pm. I have some mylar eclipse glasses that you may be able to tape over a camera lens to get a photograph of it. Alternatively, the big 10" solar filter for the school SCT could be held over one of your Dobs to shoot an image through your telescope! This, however, is a 2 person operation. Happily, this is on a Sunday evening so you could potentially travel somewhere to get a clear sightline all the way down to the horizon. I mention this now so you can do some advance planning. Of course, we always have the Michigan weather to contend with but you will want to have a plan in place and the necessary equipment with you in case the weather cooperates. While we are on topic of solar observing, we could try again on a sunny day after school to do some solar photography. I got some new ideas of how we may be able to shoot through the PST after the FAAC meeting, and we didn't try to do images of sunspots through Big Blue, did we?
I am really excited to see how your Moon video images turn out. When you use Registax or another program to stack and reject the images, I would like you to make a note of how many good images were actually used in the final image you process. We could now potentially do some video of Mars and Saturn using the same technique (it would take a lot less time!).
Some thoughts on sweet sky scene shots: Why not try to image the ISS on a pass overhead? I was able to get it even on my iPhone!! If you took a shot every (x) seconds, you could actually create an animated gif of it flying through the night sky! I got the idea while looking at Chris' awesome GBT + stars sky scenes. If you haven't seen them, go look on his gallery page! There's a good website where you can enter your location and it will tell you when the next pass of the ISS is, how long it will travel through the sky, and where to look for it: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/region.cgi?country=United_States®ion=Michigan
For the Android, Space junk Lite will help you find the ISS: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=us.xyzw.spacejunk&feature=search_result
I use Satellite Watcher on my iPhone to do this and it works great! http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/satellite-watcher/id367262608?mt=8
Idea #2: Have you ever seen an iridium flare? These are weird, beautiful and eerie events. If you want to learn about them, this page pretty much covers it all: http://www.satobs.org/iridium.html
Again, there are websites and apps to predict them. I use the Sputnik app for the iPhone: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sputnik!/id393001070?mt=8
Apparently, there are Droid issues with the free version of this app, but the $1.45 version seems to work: http://www.appbrain.com/app/iridium-flares-pro/iridium.flares.pro
Bob Berta is coming on MAY 22, a Tuesday after school. SAVE THE DATE! Please start assembling your "how do I...?" list. Someone suggested I try to get a GP News article about your asteroid class, so I may invite a photographer/reporter or at least shoot a few photos of him working with you. Please ask your parents if this would be OK to have your photo published in the GP News.
And now, the telescope news: I heard back from Frank. He does have a 10" Dob that can rent for the week at $50. But the 12" Dob cost $140, which I may point out is a higher price than the 17.5" Dob. So, this seems a no-brainer. If we rent both the 10" and the 17.5" the total price is $190/4 = $48. Is that our plan? Of course, in the meantime, he may acquire some more smaller telescopes or sell the ones he has now. So...maybe the way to do this is to set a price limit that we can go up to- say $50 each, and get what we can at the time. Could you please discuss this and see if that is a workable number for you? Or, if not, what is?
May 7
Here is your Moon Project! I have books and maps to help you out. Also there are great resources on the web, and even apps that can get you started. More on Moon aids tomorrow.
For your section of the Moon, I would like you to do the following research:
1. Find an identifiable feature, like a crater. Find out its name and diameter in miles or km. From that, calculate your image’s width and breadth in miles or km. Explain your work to me (what crater did you pick, show me where it is on the image, show me your calculation set-ups) (9 pts)
2. What other features besides craters can you see on this image? Possible features are rays, maria, rilles, scarps (escarpments), mountains, ringed plains, domes, flooded craters, central peaks, crater chains, wrinkle ridges and valleys. Maybe you can even find some other unusual object!
Identify at least one of each of these on your image by making a Photoshop version of your image with objects identified by arrows or numbers. (12)
3. State the orientation of your image. Is N or S up? Is E or W to the right? (2)
4. Add a labeled version of your image to your photo gallery with a detailed caption containing the information in points 1, 2, 3 above. (7)
Project total is 30 points!
Coming soon:
Comet, Supernova and Minor Planet projects (less meaty). Also, some thoughts about the upcoming partial solar eclipse May 20, iridium flares and ISS transits.
No word yet from Frank about Tscope rentals. Also, I will let you know about a Bob Berta date when we have it.
May 4
So far we have decided we would like to rent 2, 12 inch dobs assuming that they are about 800 dollars to sell.
May 3
Richard- I gave you M83 in your dropbox since it turns out I only took one image of M64- maybe put it on your observing/imaging list for this summer?
May 2
We need to come up with some choices for Bob Berta's return. Here are the dates he gave me: May W9, Th10, F11, Tu22, F25. Please discuss this and give me 2 choices, in order of preference, TODAY. Thanks.
As far as this quarter's images, don't worry about doing a planet, but you can if you find something great...my images aren't so hot to work with, and you will have lots more to do. I do however want to know soon which section of the Moon you plan on doing IP on- because I am going to ask that you do some lunar research on the image! It would be nice if each of you could post at least a raw image on your gallery page soon so that I can begin working on your "Moon project". :-)
I have a project that I would like you to begin working on now, for 2 grades. I want you to create 2 lists of objects that you would like to observe at DPO (either optically with binos or telescope, or imaging with the 14"). Here is what I would like on the lists:
List 1 Dark time objects. These would be objects you observe the first 1-3 days at DPO, June 18-20. I would like at a minimum 16 objects on this list. Arrange it in order of when it makes the most sense to observe (usually by RA). If you have a far S object, observe it as close to transit time as possible! The S limit for DPO is about -45 deg dec for the observatory telescope and about -53 deg dec for outdoor observing. On the list I would like: Object name, type of object, RA and Dec, magnitude if known. Good "dark time" targets are diffuse and dark nebula and faint galaxies and PN. Remember to see where the Moon is on each of these dates so you know where the "zone of avoidance" is!
List 2 Grey time objects for dates in the latter half of your DPO stay. As above, 16 objects but here include brighter objects such as PN, binary stars, planets, bright galaxies far from the Moon.
Everyone must submit their own lists.
Preliminary grade is 40 points *per list* = 80 points of this quarter! I will critique the lists and get back to you with suggestions if I see problems. Use Stellarium or Starry Night to assemble your lists. I have some good observing books you can borrow if you don't have an idea of where to start- remember the lat/long of DPO is below (April 18 post). Begin by determining the times of the end/beginning of twilight at DPO on the dates you select- note time zone below. Starry Night is on the computers in my classroom and in the SCI 201 computer lab.
Please assemble your lists using Excel (preferred because you can sort by RA and dec) or MS Word (table format) and e-mail them to me by next Friday, May 11. I will be throwing some more projects at you soon, so don't procrastinate too long or you will be overwhelmed!
May 1**
So maybe I did not make myself clear enough....for the Moon this quarter I would like ALL of you to take a sequence from what we filmed with the Astrovid and use Registax and then whatever else you want to make a spectacular Moon image. I know Chris has been working on this some...what about the rest of you?? Registax is a free download! (But not for the Mac. However, Zach, you can use the school laptop to do this part!)
I have put all the pictures I have in your Dropboxes except for Chris - I don't have M22- can you pick something else?
And also Richard - I still have to give you M64. It's on my other computer.
I have made the following reservations for us:
Wednesday June 20 - Amado, AZ
Tour Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
SAO- Mt. Hopkins $7 each
Must be there at 8:45 am. Bring your own lunch plus jackets, return off the mountain at 3pm
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/facilities/flwo/about.html
Sat. June 23 Safford, AZ
Tour Mt. Graham – LBT, Vatican Observatory, sub mm radio telescope
We will start very early morning, since this is a long drive, and a full day.
Reserved for 6! (my husband will accompany us to help with driving) $40 each, includes a box lunch.
http://www.eac.edu/discoverypark/mgio.shtm
Mon. June 25 1 pm Mirror Lab, $8 per person
Tucson: Tour the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab reserved for 5 on my credit card $40 paid
New Mirror lab T-shirts will be available!
http://mirrorlab.as.arizona.edu/
And now for the exciting news- I found a place where we can rent a telescope (or two, if you wish)
The way this works is these are used telescopes for sale, and they rent for one week at 10% of their sale price.
So, here are a few examples:
a 17.5" Dob for $130 for 7 days 130/4= $33 each
a 4" Explore Scientific refractor with a G5 Celestron (tracking) drive (but not GOTO) $165 165/4= $42 each
Or perhaps if you want to go small we could rent a few 10" Dobs- but you will have dark sky- why not go for the most glass you can afford?
If cost is a constraint, you could choose to individually (or 2 of you) rent a telescope. Talk about this and decide, then I will reserve something for you. If you want I can inquire about the cost of smaller telescopes.
I found a couple new links on the Starizona site that you may want to explore:
Starizona plug-in free trial
Tutorials on 2 filters
http://starizona.com/acb/Starizona-Photoshop-Plugin-Package---Zone-MaskLevelizer-Filters-P1125C97.aspx
These are plugins for Photoshop that have free downloads for the trial version. They won't let you save the final version, but maybe you could grab it with a screen shot.
http://starizona.com/acb/downloads/videos.aspx Starizona video tutorials
These are on YouTube.
BTW, Alison, you still have my two DVDs on image processing- could you please return them or maybe one of your other 3 colleagues would like to borrow them?
We need to resolve a few dates for Bob Berta's final return to help us...I need Alison tennis schedule!!
April 19
I found an interesting web site while doing some other work:
http://lcogt.net/education/article
Check out these points on the site in particular:
How to make color astronomical images with Photoshop
How to stack FITS files with Iris
And the good news is....WE FINALLY GOT THE MOON ON VIDEO!!!
Now I need a few of you to get to work digitizing it, then splitting and editing video segments.
I meant to add Alison's find form a while ago- just stumbled actross it again:
http://www.astronomyphotos.com/PhotoshopTechniques1.htm
April 18
In 4 days (April 22, this weekend) we will have the Lyrid meteor shower. It will be dark time and if clear a great time for you to go out and try to catch a meteor on you camera (or, someone can borrow my school manual film camera with a cable release). I also have tripods available if any of you need them! You should also note that the Sun is pretty active these days due to a large active area rotating towards us...so maybe this weekend or next week we will have a chance to see some aurora- it sounds from your observing logs that Liggett would be the place to try to photograph either meteors or aurorae. And, if possible, we should still try to find M95 and image the supernova!
Re: this quarter-
You ALL should make time each day to do your class logs- get yourselves organized and use the last 5 minutes of each class to do them daily. Also put some detail in them. No- for 4 days in a row- "I updated my logs, or , "I sticky-noted". WHAT did you sticky-note? Which logs (type and date) did you update? Remember - if we did an observing night and you would like to use the next day for a tutorial- just make a note of it in your log! Say : tutorial because of observing night last night. No Chris, that doesn't mean that you only have to work in class 2 days every week! :-) Let's be reasonable with that privilege!
A reminder that class time should be used for just that- not texting or mindless wandering on the internet...
Last quarter taught us all a lot. I would like you to continue the process of posting your images (preferable raw and final) on your pages. Please don't clear out the ones you have there now!
I will be tossing some more projects at you this quarter, starting next week- it won't just be a repeat of last quarter.
More later on my plans for the final!
A few things we can be working on right now:
1. Selection of which objects you would like to image this quarter.
2. DAILY LOGS!
3. Specific questions for our meeting with Bob Berta next Tuesday (our half day). What don't you know how to do??
4. For some of you, learning to use Photoshop and Maxim more.
5. I have the video which we took last observing night. Let's see if it really worked this time- if so, one of you is going to digitize it using the software on my school laptop. Then we are all going to take different sections of that, video- edit it, and use Registax to build images.
A few more of my thoughts....
Towards the end of the quarter I will be asking you to work collaboratively on assembling imaging lists for the 14" telescope in AZ. This will require that you use Starry Night or Stellarium to set the location to DPO, determine when it is dark, and build a queue of objects for each date. You should all have 25% input on what gets imaged. You should also think about when to image each object- you want to do it as close to the meridian as possible. Also, you want small slews between objects to minimize refocusing time. Assume we will use the Hyperstar the entire time, so you will need images that will be big enough to be seen- the FOV of the Hyperstar is 73.2 X 49.1 arc minutes- translated that is very roughly 1.2 X 0.8 degrees. So, a planet or a small planetary nebula (PN) really doesn't work.
A few helpful stats:
I usually take 30 images in each filter, because after that, the signal to noise ratio (S:N) doesn't really improve significantly.
The best color ratio for images taken with my CCD camera is R:G:B = 1:1.2:1.5. That's because all CCD cameras are biased towards being more red-sensitive. If you balance out your images using this ratio, it will be as close to "optically correct" as possible.
The coordinates of Desert Peak Observatory are:
latitude 32d 35' 51.18"
longitude 111d 15' 29.28" W
elevation 2074' or 632m
time correction from UTC: - 7 hours (So, if it is 2h 30m (2:30am) in Greenwich , it is 19h 30m in AZ (7:30pm, the day before!))
April 2
There is an image processing contest that seems just perfect for you all to enter- read the details below. in fact, I may just make this a 4th quarter assignment!
http://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/hiddentreasures/processingcontest/
As you know, this is the last week of the quarter. So that means you should have your IP portfolios completed for each of the types of images you needed to do during this quarter. AND posted to your wiki page!
A reminder: for each image you need with it:
The Image Name!
1. when and where it was taken (or, if an archive, where you got the raw image files (include a hyperlink to the site)). Archives usually include the "where and when" info. (3 points)
2. the equipment used to take it - telescope (if applicable) and camera type (this should also be supplied for archived photos), and what filters (if any were used) (3 points)
3. exposure times. If stacked, multiply the number of images through each filter x its exposure time = total exp. time for each filter (4 points)
4. the complete history of what you did to process the image, including programs used to image, stack and process the image (12 points)
5. the completed image itself = 18 points (this will be evaluated partially based on quality achieved, given what the beginning raw images(s) were like
A reminder: these are the images I expect to see (at a minimum) with documentation in your portfolio:
1. a planetary image
2. a galaxy
3. a nebula
4. a star cluster
5. a sky scene image (wide field) or other (comet, aurora, etc)
6. the Moon
7. one image from a mined internet archive
8. one image that you personally have taken
You may combine categories above (for instance, 6 and 8, or 3 and 7), but I expect to see the accomplishment of the complete list above.
Although the quarter ends this Thursday, the grades aren't due until after break, so you have until Saturday, April 14 to wrap it up. I will do final grades on April 15. Images over and above what is required can help pad your grade!
OTHER NEWS: Did you hear about the new supernova in M95? This is a galaxy in Leo, and very near Mars at the moment, and would make an awesome observing target as well as an imaging one.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120322.html
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/143981746.html?imw=Y
I will grade the images in your portfolio once you have told me they are complete. I will be looking at them this week to give you some constructive comments.
March 23
Well, it has been quite a week, from astrophotographer Bob Berta's 2 hour tutorial guest appearance to our two meetings last night about NRAO and Arizona. As promised, I provide you with links of our options below.
Please share them with your parents for our "trip of a lifetime" experience!
I have also reposted 90% of the handout I passed out at the meeting last night.
You may want to spend today together looking at your options, thinking about what sounds good and what can be tossed away, etc.
BTW, I did check out the possibility of renting telescopes and I don't think we can do it. So we may want to revisit flying with them...?
ARIZONA TRIP
Kitt Peak - check out the many tour options!
http://www.noao.edu/outreach/kpvc/Hours.html yes for 3 sectioned tour
SAO- Mt. Hopkins
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/facilities/flwo/about.html Yes
LBT- Mt. Graham
http://www.eac.edu/discoverypark/mgio.shtm YES.
Mirror Lab, Tucson
http://mirrorlab.as.arizona.edu/ Fo $ho
Starizona
http://starizona.com/acb/ Yes
Mt. Lemmon Sky Nights
http://skycenter.arizona.edu/programs/public/skynights NO
Astronomy trip to Arizona
Details: Possible window of days to visit: June 17-26
New moon is the 19th
sample selected June 18/ return June 26 – via Phoenix (cheaper and faster than Tucson)
Southwest: $440 RT, nonstops both ways, two 50 lbs bags free each way
Food: estimate $15?? per day
Possible day trips:
Assuming 6 or less people with our Yukon at 16 mpg and $4/gallon gas:
These trips would cost:
Mt Graham LBT tour – a $40 charge / person, includes a box lunch $90 in gas/ # of people
Mirror Lab tour (a must!) $8 student price- In Tucson - $26 in gas/#
Kitt Peak tour has many options, from a free walk-around, to a $150 per person overnight imaging campout
90 mins. west of Tucson 180 miles $45 in gas/#
Mt. Hopkins is about $8, a definite must-see for the price! This is in Amado, AZ
Round trip mileage 179 miles $44.75 in gas/#
General “tweeking” estimate:
9 days food $135
airfare $410
gas, with every trip, assuming 5 per car $60
admissions for all trips (except Kitt Peak) $96
spending money for T-shirts, astro items, souvenirs??
Approximate total $700
Add more for spending money or side trips
March 20 Happy Vernal Equinox!!!
A reminder as we discussed last week: I want each of you to revise your image galleries to have the image information (date, telescope, place?, and camera) with it. Also, fix the images (RG) so they are open when you open the page. Finally, you should have listed what IP techniques you used to create each photo. Chris is farthest along on what I envision a gallery should look like when complete. AA has no text at all by the pictures!!!!! Finally, I keep hearing about all these images you are working on, but I don't see them anywhere! I like Chris' idea of showing the original and the final version. If they are not final, why don't you at least post where you are with the image, even if you expect to work on it further.
The quarter ends April 4. That is 12 school days after today. How are you doing on accomplishing your "one in each category" image for the final quarter project?? Strap on your jets and let's get more images posted!
Feb. 28
I am happy to see progress on your personal galleries (on the left index page). These will ultimately develop into your "end of year" portfolios.
Don't forget to complete work on your observing logs and send them to me asap.
I put some comments on a few of your blog posts- note them.
I am bringing in my personal observing logbook today as an example of how you can embellish an observing log to make it more useful to YOU. And maybe more fun.
A Nice Resource..............
Here is a resource I like. Cloudynights I would encourage you to sign up and look through the forums section. Specifically the DSLR, CCD, and Planetary Imaging sections contain a wealth of knowledge.
Clear Skies,JG
A Quick Intro and Hello!
Good Morning Everyone! A big thank you to Ardis for inviting me to join this group of folks with similar interest. I do not believe most of you know me but I too am an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer. I hope to be able to share some of my experiences with astrophotography and astronomy. Also, I hope to be able to learn something from the folks here. No matter how much one knows in a certain subject like astronomy, astrophotography, chemistry, physics, etc. there is always more to be learned and discovered.
Let me introduce myself with a short background. My name is Jason Gibson. As mentioned above I am aMichigannative, born and raised nearFlint. By day I am a chemist and by night I am an amateur astronomer & astrophotographer. I have been involved in astronomy for a major portion of my life but took the leap into imaging about 10 years ago. I started with shooting basic photos on film. My skills evolved from fixed tripod wide field star trail photos to deep sky images of remote galaxies to high resolution planetary imaging. All forms of astrophotography can be rewarding but can also be incredibly frustrating. I know!
I am not an expert by any means and will not profess to be one. But I have developed skills, knowledge, and routines that work for me and allow me to create images of nebulae, galaxies, planets, etc. that I am happy with. I enjoy answering questions and if I do not know an answer I enjoy searching out the answer. I encourage folks to strive to continually improve upon what they already know and build on the basis that has been developed. This is true for everything and not just astronomy.
So, having said all that I shall stop rambling and give you an idea of the type of equipment and software I find suits my needs.
Imaging Setup
Visual
Software
I have limited experience with both Maxim and Images Plus. I found early on that Deepsky Stacker performed well and I rely on this free software to calibrate, register, and stack my image data.
One note….. I am new to “Wiki” so bare with me while I figure this thing out. :D
Clear Skies!
JG
News - February 27
Note that Jason Gibson, an astrophotographer from the EMU club, has joined our wiki. Read through his posts and go get the IP freeware programs he has that you don't have! Also, Jason will be meeting with us sometime to help us out! Stay tuned on the date. Jason also will be uploading a tutorial for us to try.
A reminder that I have a planetarium event on this Saturday and if clear your telescope assistance will be needed if you can make it, about 7:30 pm.
However right now the long range forecast doesn't look too promising!
I have added new files to all of your dropboxes. Some new ones from DPO last week: Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Comet Garradd. Some other files that some of you requested have also been added: M37, M44, M41. Sorry Richard, I could not get M47!
Can you please send to me your observing logs for these nights so I can add them into your grades?
2/2 school
2/4 Zach's house
2/9 school
and any others I don't know about that you have personally done...
I have also invited astrophotographer Bob Berta to our group. No word yet on if he will join the wiki, but he has volunteered to help us as well!
Also, a very nice resource worth every penny ($22) if you have photoshop or photoshop elements is Astronomy Tools.
Check out this website for what product you may want: http://www.prodigitalsoftware.com
I have this and I love it!
Friday Feb. 17
You must check this out, if you have not seen it already!
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/page/scale-universe-cary-michael-huang-california-high-school-15573968?fb_ref=abc-fb-recs
I will be at DPO on the nights of Feb. 23 & 24, FYI. But you can reach me anytime by e-mail (use the amacio address after today, during vacation).
Has anyone yet looked at the video tape to see if we got anything? That would be a nice task for today. And where is the video??
Richard, I put images of Omega Centauri in your Dropbox. You also need to go to the 3rd quarter info page and update it with information about your new telescope! :-)
Thursday Feb. 16
I hope you all had fun at the talk and book signing last night, especially those of you who visited Eastern Michigan University IN DETROIT!
A special request: Is there anything you really want images of that I don't already have? I will have maybe 1-2 nights at DPO next week. I plan to spend the first getting some planetary images, then maybe switch back to my old system of wide-field deep sky imaging. (It will be grey time.) I want to try to some images of Comet Garradd in the early morning sky.
Did you notice this oft-repeated phrase at Phil's talk last night: "it turns out that..."
This is an astronomy culture phrase used almost universally when explaining a scientific concept. When you hear other astronomers speak, it will begin to jump out at you!
Save this date on your calendars: Sat. March 5. If it is clear, I would like your help at school with telescopes for a VIP group. I will tell you more later, but it is going to be a great night if clear: Mars and C. Garradd at their closest, the Moon, Jupiter, Mercury, Venus and Saturn all in the sky. And that's before we see any stars!!
Check out this web site for a great astro-imaging guide:
http://starizona.com/acb/ccd/ccd.aspx
We will visit Starizona if you come out to AZ this June. It is a most awesome astronomy shop- not big, but the guy who runs it is an expert amateur and imager.
BTW, check your Dropboxes! The Image Fairy has filled them with goodies. :-)
Monday, Feb. 6
The weekend was mostly clear- did you observe? If so, please spend today getting your observing logs and blogs filled out about your weekend, and posting any images you were able to get. Tonight looks good, too. I have not gotten all the observing logs from last week with much detail...today??! Not only what telescope did you use, what did you observe, what did you image, dates, times, etc. (see below)
I would like each of you to build a new page for yourself off this main wiki page where you can begin to store your images and comments on them.
Alison used Lightroom 3, that's the first I had heard of it. Let us know if you uncover good imaging resources. We found out, for example, that you can get a fully functional trial version of Maxim DL for 60 days (PC only). Go for it! Someday, you will realize that Maxim is your friend...once we all learn how to use it!
I received notice of this star party- want to go? It might be a nice outing for the RATs, too:
http://www.michiana-astro.org/
I am working on getting some astro imagers to join our wiki, or maybe we will go and visit them...
See below, since some of you have not yet done what I posted on Friday.
Friday Feb 3.
Today your first set of daily logs are due (that would be 5 of them), as well as the initial plan I asked you to complete. I have posted the form for the initial plan on the index at the left side of the page- it is called" 3rd quarter information and planning form. I have most of Richard's form (see the part you missed and fill it out for me, please!) Also try to write up some imaging and observing logs for what we did last night. Include date, times, location, targets, imaging instruments, telescopes used, eyepieces or barlows used (if any), and exposure times. Write about last night in your daily logs/ blogs, and detail what you did such as: I learned how to operate the school 10" SCT or, I took a 15 second guided exposure of M42 that made me to fall to the ground or, I learned how to turn M42 into the Moon! (Sorry, I couldn't resist!) Wow - didn't we have a great time last night?? Chris and Richard, be sure to post some of your photos from last night on the wiki so that everyone can see them!!
It is critical that you keep track of what you tried and if it did or did not work, so that the next time you are working, you have a record of notes that will help you. In Astronomy we say,
"If you didn't write it down, it did not happen." So following in the spirit of Galileo (whose birthday is this month, BTW), write it down!
This weekend we have a *chance* at some clear sky and it's bright time so it would be a great weekend to go out and shoot the Moon. Who has an iPhone? I have an iPhone adapter that you can put on your telescope and the Moon is the most excellent target for this!
If you don't already have any good sky simulation software, I encourage you to download Stellarium:
http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Download
I am also going to be sending you an invitation to get Dropbox. Look for it on your e-mail! This is a great free way to transfer huge files back and forth.
I would like each of you to start a gallery of sorts or each image you worked on- regardless of how well it turned out. It will be a record of what you have accomplished or have tried to accomplish.
You can do this by adding a new page to this wiki- try it out and then move all your images to that page. Give it a descriptive title so we can see whose page it is.
D-One, my Mac Man! Do you know there's a Mac version of Gimp? Download Gimpshop:
http://gimpshop.com/downloads/
New image!!!!!
- Discovery-One
D-1: This is a very magnified version of a YSO that is one of the few "variable nebulas" in the sky. You can make all those little white dots go away by using the despeckle command under Filter/Noise/ in Photoshop.
New processed image of jupiter with 3 aligned color images
-Richard
Richard, try the unsharp mask command under Filter/Noise/ in Photoshop to see if you can sharpen this up a bit without losing image quality.